Clarinettist Anat Cohen & Quartetinho On Tour In Celebration of new album “Bloom”.

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Clarinettist Anat Cohen will be touring widely in the US and Europe during October and November 2024 and into 2025 with her band Quartetinho in support of her new album "Bloom". Press release attached

We have received the following press release;

Grammy-Nominated Jazz Clarinetist Anat Cohen & Quartetinho On Tour In Celebration of BLOOM

Grammy-Nominated Jazz Clarinetist Anat Cohen Presents Bloom, the Second Album by Her Globally Minded, Free-Spirited Band Quartetinho

Bloom — OUT TODAY on Anzic Records — features a fresh take on Monk’s “Trinkle, Tinkle” plus originals by Anat and bassist-guitarist Tal Mashiach, pianist-accordionist Vitor Gonçalves & vibraphonist-percussionist James Shipp
https://anatcohen.bandcamp.com/album/quartetinho-bloom-2

PREMIERED ON JAZZ AFTER HOURS & JAZZ HAPPENING NOW WITH JEFF HANLEY

ANAT COHEN QUARTETINHO
IS TAKING BLOOM AROUND THE WORLD:

Oct 16: Columbia, MO | Whitmore Recital Hall @ 7:00pm
w/ Romero Lubambo & Peter Martin

Oct 17: Little Rock, AR | Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts @ 7:30pm
w/ Romero Lubambo & Peter Martin

Oct 18: Fayettville, AR | Walton Arts Center @ 7:30pm
w/ Romero Lubambo & Peter Martin

Oct 19: Columbia, MO | The Sheldon @ 8:00pm
w/ Romero Lubambo & Peter Martin

Oct 22: Cologne, GER | Stadtgarten @ 7:30pm

Oct 23: Berlin, GER | Zig Zag Jazz Club @ 9:00pm

Oct 25: Belgrade, SRB | Belgrade Jazz Festival @ 7:00pm

Oct 26: Zagreb, CRO | Zagreb Jazz Festival @ 8:00pm

Oct 27: Split, CRO | Hrvatski Dom Split @ 8:00pm

Oct 28: Pula, CRO | Backstage Live Pula @ 8:00pm

Oct 30: Lausanne, CH | JazzOnze+ Festival @ 7:00pm

Oct 31: Paris, FR | Le Duc des Lombards @ 7:30pm & 10:00pm

Nov 1: Munich, GER | Jazzclub Unterfahrt @ 8:30pm

Nov 2: Wuppertal, GER | Wupppertal JazzMeeting @ 7:30pm

Nov 4: Barcelona, ES | Auditori Conservatori Liceu Masterclass @ 4:30pm

Nov 4: Barcelone, ES | Con. Superior de Música del Liceu @ 8:30pm

Nov 6: Rome, IT | Casa del Jazz @ 9:00pm

Nov 7: Macerata, IT | Macerata Jazz @ 9:00pm

Nov 8: Padova, IT | Padova Jazz Festival @ 9:00pm

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!!
Anat Cohen will be marking her 50th birthday next spring with a special set of four concerts in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room, an indoor amphitheater overlooking the New York City skyline. “Anat Cohen: Journeys — A 50th Birthday Celebration,” taking place March 14-15, 2025, will present the clarinetist-saxophonist performing in solo, duo, small-group and large-ensemble settings, including with her Tentet and alongside her brothers, trumpeter Avishai Cohen and saxophonist Yuval Cohen, both celebrated artists in their own right. The programs will showcase Anat’s broad mastery of music, from swing and post-bop to Brazilian and other world styles.
For tickets and details, click here
https://jazz.org/concert/anat-cohen-journeys-a-50th-birthday-celebration/

“Wherever Anat Cohen’s music is heard, it’s instantly springtime. Sunny melodies and spritely rhythms mark the clarinetist’s music time and time again . . . Cohen is undeniably one of the jazz giants of the modern scene, and over the past 20 years, has contributed to the shape of jazz today. You can’t possibly go wrong with scooping up one of these recordings.”
- Dave Sumner, The Best Jazz On Bandcamp, Sept 2024

“Sophisticated, fun, and accessible, Bloom is pretty much guaranteed to brighten your day.”
- Mel Minter, Musically Speaking

“Blessed with a diversity of ensemble textures… this intimate, quietly beautiful chamber music sparkles with originality.”
- from DownBeat Magazine’s four-star review of the first Quartetinho album

Anat Cohen, renowned for her expressive virtuosity and infectious charisma, has been an international jazz star for some two decades now, with a long string of releases via her Anzic Records label ranging from hard-swingers to lilting balladry, from small groups to larger ensembles and back again, exploring a world of music along the way. The clarinetist’s newest release is Bloom, the second album by her foursome Quartetinho (pronounced “quartet-CHIN-yo”). The band name is Portuguese for “little quartet,” although the players make a big, color-rich sound, each an ace on multiple instruments: Anat on various clarinets, Tal Mashiach on bass and guitar, Vitor Gonçalves on piano and accordion, and James Shipp on vibraphone and percussion. The group’s 2022 debut recording, Quartetinho, included a brace of originals by Anat, Brazilian classics by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Egberto Gismonti, and even an interpretation of the “Goin’ Home” melody from Dvorák’s “New World” Symphony. DownBeat described that first album’s pan-American sound as “fetching” and “luxurious,” while the UK’s Jazzwise declared the disc to be “hugely enjoyable.” Bloom, the Quartetinho follow-up (and Anat’s 19th album as a leader or co-leader), showcases compositions by each member of the band, as well as a lovely, lyrical take on Thelonious Monk’s “Trinkle, Tinkle” and an expansive arrangement of Paraguayan guitarist-composer Augustín Barrios Mangoré’s classic “La Catedral.” Anzic releases Bloom in vinyl, CD and digital editions, today, September 27, 2024. As Bandcamp Daily said: “There’s nothing controversial about stating that Anat Cohen is one of the very best clarinet players in the jazz world, and it’s always a treat when she releases a new album.”

The members of Quartetinho have an extensive collaborative history together, as each musician is also part of the Grammy-nominated Anat Cohen Tentet (which has yielded two albums, 2017’s Happy Song and 2019’s Triple Helix). Mashiach, a native of Israel, has also played bass in Anat’s jazz quartet off and on for nearly a decade. She met Gonçalves in Rio de Janeiro 20-plus years ago before they reconnected by playing Brazilian choro music together when he moved to New York. Anat knew Shipp on the New York scene for years before tapping him for the Tentet. “These guys are all fabulous players and writers — and wonderfully creative people all-around,” Anat says. “Vitor is a virtuoso on piano and accordion. I’ve always had such respect for what a dedicated, deeply knowledgeable musician he is, expert not only about Brazilian music but many other styles, too. Tal is a versatile, incredibly musical player, on both bass and guitar, and he’s the youngest member of the group, bringing the energy and positivity of youth. And James, the American-born person in the band who explains some of the mysteries of the U.S. to the rest of us, not only plays vibraphone, marimba and other percussion instruments so well; he’s also such an inventive person, always with his own angle on things, his own personality.”

Mashiach, Gonçalves and Shipp are “true team players and imaginative partners in the music,” Anat adds. “I can come in with an idea that isn’t necessarily complete and they’ll always have contributions to help make a piece of music reach its potential. That ability to experiment and double on different instruments really expands the music, particularly with the ability to overdub in the studio. There’s just four of us, but the band’s sound feels bigger, richer than that. The openness of the musicians adds something vital, too. No one is limited to a certain genre. We can jump from a tango to a Brazilian song to swinging on a Monk tune to playing a Cuban 6/8. We can go to a lot of places with the repertoire, which is really satisfying — and fun.”

Anat’s accolades include being named Clarinetist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association regularly since 2007; she has also been judged the top clarinetist in the DownBeat readers and critics polls repeatedly since 2011. A JazzTimes review of a 2022 Quartetinho performance at Seattle’s Earshot Festival marveled over the sound and spirit of band’s interplay, while singling out the leader this way: “Cohen is clearly inspired by the melodious extravagance, revelatory rhythms and rich colors of Brazilian music. For her, its prevailing message is joy… launching her into wild, wailing, soaring heights… She has been winning jazz polls on clarinet for years, but her work has steadily grown stronger and deeper and freer.” Along with teaching at the Stanford Jazz Workshop and The New School, Anat has been Jazz Artist-in-Residence at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute and is completing a master’s degree at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), which has included composing a series of études for clarinet.

For Bloom, Anat wrote the playful album-opener “The Night Owl,” co-arranging the piece with the band from one of her new clarinet études. For the ornate “Coco Rococo,” Anat composed a melody atop a Brazilian-accented groove by Shipp. The vibraphonist contributed his dynamic, theatrical composition “Superheroes in the Gig Economy” (originally written for a dance performance) and the more ruminative “Friends in Every Manner of Conveyance.” Mashaich supplied the beautiful “Paco,” an album highlight that blends pensive emotion with flowing melody; and Vitor Gonçalves channeled Astor Piazzolla with the dark pearl of his “Tango Para Guillermo.”

The new album is another fruitful collaboration between Anat and producer Oded Lev-Ari, who is also her partner in the New York-based Anzic Records (and a kindred spirit since their high-school days in Israel). The third movement of Barrios’s “La Catedral,” a work originally for solo classical guitar, was something that had long intrigued Anat, the clarinetist having performed it with Brazilian guitarist Romero Lubambo; the arrangement for Quartetinho was modified in the studio, with Lev-Ari’s “master producer chops,” as Anat recalled, proving invaluable for freeing the players from the score so that they could embody the music as a band in their own way. As for the other outside tune, Anat brought Monk’s “Trinkle, Tinkle” to the Bloom session with the idea of opening it up from traditional 4/4 swing, believing that Monk’s music can be arranged in myriad ways without losing its essence. “It can swing or not swing, but it’s always Monk — you just have to keep in touch with the melody and the right spirit,” she explains. “I think it sounds different and fresh, and it feels great to play.”

Reflecting on the way Quartetinho inspires her, Anat says: “This band really seems to bring out the dedication to song in my playing, in everyone’s playing. I know that I feel a lot of support from the group when I’m playing melodies. There’s a lot of respect in Quartetinho for melody and lyricism, as well as for the various traditions we get into, whether it’s jazz or samba or Israeli folk music or the American songbook. That said, these are fearless musicians I’m playing with, so sometimes things can get a bit wild on stage. It’s important to balance a respect for these deep traditions with the chutzpah to say something personal, to be real. In this sense, I feel like the guys are in tune with my various personalities and we bring out the best in each other.”

Thinking further about the cultural message “between the notes” of this music, Anat concludes: “It would make me very happy if when people hear us live or listen to one of our records, they get a sense of ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ All of this takes real effort, mastering an art, engaging in a conversation and listening to each other, doing what it takes to share something meaningful — and listening for the audience takes real effort, too, to be fully present in the moment, to be in tune with what’s happening on stage or with what someone put down on a record. In this day and age, so many things about living in the world can be painful. I know that music is the only place where I feel completely safe. This band makes me feel that everything is possible and accepted. We should treasure these experiences, make the most of the journey. I hope people come along and they experience the music of Bloom as we do, as something positive, uniting, joyful.”

Anat Beyond Quartetinho:
It’s telling that, even early in her career, Anat won over the most knowing of jazz sages: Dan Morgenstern praised her “gutsy, swinging” style, Ira Gitler her “liquid dexterity and authentic feeling,” and Gary Giddins her musicality “that bristles with invention.” Nat Hentoff said: “Anat does what all authentic musicians do: She tells stories from her own experiences that are so deeply felt that they are very likely to connect listeners to their own dreams, desires and longings.”
Anat made her name by leading small groups deep in the tradition of swinging post-bop jazz. She made her leader debut on record in 2005 with the small-combo Place & Time (2005). Ambitious early on, she released a pair of albums in 2007: the orchestral Noir and string-quartet-laced Poetica. The disc Notes from the Village, from 2008, showcased her multi-reed talents in quartet and quintet settings. In a 2009 milestone, Anat became the first Israeli artist to ever headline the hallowed Village Vanguard, a stand that yielded a quartet tribute to the Benny Goodman songbook with Clarinetwork: Live at the Village Vanguard, released the following year. Her next album, the worldly Claroscuro of 2012, featured such guests as Paquito D’Rivera and Wycliffe Gordon — and it garnered a four-and-a-half-star review in DownBeat.
In 2015, Anat released her most wide-ranging album to date, Luminosa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1tSmOrTmBg