Clarinetwork: Anat Cohen Plays Benny Goodman

by Josh Jackson, WBGO

Anat Cohen takes Benny Goodman to infinity and beyond at the Village Vanguard this week. Photo Credit: Osnat Rom

I'm heading to the Montreal Jazz Festival. This is good news, except I'm removing myself from a full week of the continuous New York Jazz Club Festival.

One of this week's shows that grabbed my attention is the Village Vanguard revue billed as "Benny Goodman and Beyond." Anat Cohen leads a quartet with one of the finer in-the-pocket rhythm sections -- pianist Benny Green, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash -- through a panoply of Goodman's Swing Era classics. On Thursday, Cohen adds five horn players to the mix to create a nonet reduction of Goodman's big band charts, arranged by Oded Lev-Ari.

Since I couldn't make it to any of the shows this week, I decided that I needed to hear what I'm missing. So I talked to Anat, and she shared some rehearsal tape. Hear it all after the jump.

Anat Cohen, like many of today's crop of young musicians, is more than a generation removed from Benny Goodman's legacy (he died in 1986), but no clarinet player currently practicing the jazz idiom can escape his overwhelming influence. Hear Anat Cohen's take on this week's "Benny Goodman and Beyond."

While I interviewed Anat, she shared some rehearsal tape of Clarinetwork, the larger ensemble. Here's a version of "Roll 'Em," the Mary Lou Williams composition that Benny Goodman's band immortalized in 1937. The music was recorded on a simple handheld device at Anat's home studio space.

Anat Cohen, clarinet; Avishai Cohen, trumpet; Wycliffe Gordon, trombone; Scott Robinson, baritone saxophone; Ted Nash, tenor saxophone; Dan Block, alto saxophone; Ehud Asherie, piano; Joe Martin, bass; Daniel Freedman, drums.

If you'd like to hear more Benny Goodman Centennial programming, check out WBGO's Benny Goodman page.
You'll find an interview and playlist with Loren Schoenberg from the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, an interview with Paquito D'Rivera and a studio session with Paquito and alumni of the Goodman band.

Off to Montreal. Au revoir.

5:40 PM ET | 06-29-2009 | permalink

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