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JerseyReviewsJazz
A Study in Jazz
Anat Cohen and
Howard Alden at IJS
By Linda Lobdell Co-Editor Jersey Jazz
Photos by Tony Mottola Editor Jersey Jazz
On March 24, we visited the Rutgers
University Newark campus to take
advantage of one of the series of wonderful
free concerts produced by the Institute of
Jazz Studies during the school year.
Host Dan Morgenstern announced the day’s
event would be unorthodox in that it would
start on time, and introduced two musicians
who are “not only among my favorite
musicians, but also among my favorite
people” — guitarist Howard Alden and
clarinetist/saxophonist Anat Cohen.
The series, called Jazz Dialogues: Intimate
Improvisations, is aptly named — it takes
place in a room where no seat is more
than 30 feet from the performers, and the
acoustics are clear but mellow. We sat in
the very front row, where we were privy to
even whispered banter between the players.
Hence I was able to observe Anat demonstrating
for Howard her latest iPhone app,
ClearTune, a chromatic tuning aid, as Dan
described the unique relationship they
share. The first tune, “Blues My Naughty
Baby Gives to Me,” set a playful tone. “This
song goes all the way back to an old New
Orleans clarinetist, Jimmie Noone,” says
Anat; Howard murmurs that the name is
pronounced “No one.” Anat, on unamplified
soprano sax for this one, dances in her
seat and Howard’s fingers fly on his
Benedetto 7-string instrument.
Their program isn’t set, so each musical
selection happens on the fly after some
back-and-forth between them. Anat’s
clarinet wails “Cry Me A River” (or “Fry
Me Some Liver” as Howard suggests). Next,
when they prepare to launch into Jelly Roll
Morton’s “Shreveport Stomp,” she quips,
“Let’s stay civil, shall we?”
They touch on a couple of choro tunes —
they describe choro as “Brazilian ragtime”—
the first being “Cochichando,” by the father
of samba, Pixinguinha.
There’s a break in the music, and the
audience, many of whom appear to be
music students, have lots of questions for
the pair. When asked how she first got into
jazz, Israeli-born Anat explains that she
always heard it at home on her parents’
LPs — Ella, Armstrong, and the American
Songbook — as well as on the radio. It turns
out her parents are sitting next to us in the
front row, and we know their musical tastes
influenced not only Anat but her two
brothers, Yuval and Avishai, who also have
established successful jazz careers. Anat says
she learned a lot from playing with other
musicians at Tel Aviv Conservatory, particularly
in a Dixieland band where the solos
were written out. Her brothers were playing
music and their friends came to the house,
listening to Charlie Parker, and broadening
her musical exposure.
Dan Morgenstern comments that he first
became aware of Howard Alden’s playing
on a Dick Sudhalter LP, and Howard recalls
that was his first LP. But he started on tenor
banjo when he was 10 years old, playing
ragtime music. And he came to New York
in 1982 to play with pianist, composer,
arranger and vocalist Joe Bushkin.
Anat and Howard tell us they first played
together in David Ostwald’s Gully Low Band
Wednesday afternoons at Birdland. Howard
had been hipped to Anat’s choro playing by
bass player Nicki Parrott, who knew Howard
wanted to play in that genre. So she brought
them together at Jules Bistro on the Lower
East Side five or six years ago. Morgenstern
points out that both Howard and Anat
play it all, from trad to contemporary and
everything in between. “I was there when
George Wein heard Anat for the first time
at a Sidney Bechet Society event. He was
knocked out hearing her play ‘Shreveport.’
He said ‘You’re unbelievable,’ and hired her
for Newport on the spot.”
A Mr. Fuji in the audience asks Anat who
her favorite players are, and she says that
although her favorites are always changing,
she wanted to be Coltrane. She knew it was
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__________________________________ May 2010