Israel-born Anat Cohen's Southland debut at Hollywood and Highland on Tuesday night was an impressive display of the qualities that last year garnered her awards from Down Beat and the Jazz Journalists Assn. -- and it also offered hope that a female horn player, fluent on clarinet and alto, tenor and soprano saxophones, will finally eradicate the outmoded notion that the art form is strictly the provenance of male performers.
While the clarinet has not been one of the prominent jazz instruments since its heyday in the Swing-era playing of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and others, in Cohen's hands -- playing material as diverse as Fats Waller's perky “Jitterbug Waltz," her own impressionistic “Washington Square Park" and a finger-busting choro by the great Brazilian composer Pixinguinha -- the instrument came alive, bursting with post-modernist improvisational transformations.
Her fleet melodic articulation and driving rhythms were supported by an irresistibly charismatic presence. Clarinet held high, her long, black, curly hair a whirling halo, she easily enticed listeners into the energetic orbit of her music. Offbeat arrangements of pieces such as “Jitterbug Waltz," with its unexpected accents, added a touch of spice to the familiar. And her own lyrical “The Purple Piece" managed to produce a few minutes of entranced calm in Hollywood and Highland's usually hyperactive central plaza.
