Anat Cohen program

Thursday

APR 5

7:30 pm

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KU Jazz Ensemble I with special guest

Anat Cohen, clarinet & saxophones

Directed by

Dan Gailey

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APR 5 | KU Jazz Ensemble I w/ Anat Cohen, clarinet & saxophones

There will be no intermission during this performance.

Selections will be announced from the stage.

Anat Cohen Clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen has won hearts and minds the world over with her expressive virtuosity and delightful stage presence. The Jazz Journalists Association has voted Anat as Clarinetist of the Year nine years in a row, and she has topped both the Critics and Readers Polls in the clarinet category in DownBeat every year since 2011.

That’s not to mention years of being named Rising Star in the soprano and tenor saxophone categories in DownBeat, as well as for Jazz Artist of the Year. In 2009, ASCAP awarded Anat a Wall of Fame prize for composition and musicianship, among other honors.

Anat was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and raised in a musical family. While attending the Berklee College of Music, she honed her jazz chops and also developed a deep love for Latin music styles. She moved to New York City in 1999, where she established Anzic Records and released numerous albums including Luminosa, her seventh album as a bandleader. Anat has also recorded four acclaimed albums as part of the 3 Cohens Sextet with her brothers, saxophonist Yuval and trumpeter Avishai. Together, they have toured across the U.S., Europe, Brazil and Australia. About the special rapport she has with her brothers, Anat says: “We can talk without talking. Often, we don’t even have to look at each other onstage. We have such history together that we feel each other through the music.”

The world’s great jazz festivals have invited Anat to perform, including the JVC, Newport, Chicago, Monterey, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage, Duke Ellington (Washington, D.C.), Montreal, Jazz a Vienne, Tudo e Jazz (Brazil), Caesaria (Israel) and Zagreb Jazzarella festivals. Anat is also a fixture on the New York scene at such clubs as Birdland, starring in a recent tribute to the music of Django Reinhardt there, among others. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Symphony Space in New York, along with Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Newark’s New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Boston’s Berklee Performance Center, the ORF-Kulturhaus in Vienna and Belgrade’s Kolarac Hall in Serbia.

As the Chicago Tribune says about Anat, “The lyric beauty of her tone, easy fluidity of her technique and extroverted manner of her delivery make this music accessible to all.”

APR 5 | KU Jazz Ensemble I w/ Anat Cohen, clarinet & saxophones

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Dan Gailey Dan Gailey is the Director of Jazz Studies and Professor of Music at the University of Kansas, where he directs Jazz Ensemble I, teaches courses in jazz composition and arranging, produces the annual KU Jazz Festival, and is director of the KU Jazz Workshop. He has been named to a coveted Chancellor’s Club Teaching Professorship at KU for 2017–23. Dan is the recipient of the 1996 IAJE Gil Evans Fellowship, presented to an emerging jazz composer from an international field of candidates. Under his direction, the KU Jazz Studies program has been the recipient of 25 DownBeat Student Music Awards, including Jazz Ensemble I’s 2015 award for Best College Jazz Ensemble in the Graduate Division and their Outstanding Performance Award in the same category in 2017.

As director of KU Jazz Ensemble I, Dan has led performances at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, the 2008 and 2014 Montreux Jazz Festivals in Switzerland, the 2014 Jazz à Vienne Festival in France, the 2017 Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival in California and the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City. He also directed the band in invited appearances at International Association of Jazz Educators Conferences in New York City, Atlanta and Boston.

The Dan Gailey Jazz Orchestra debut CD, What Did You Dream?, was released in July 2010 on Origin/OA2 Records and features all original compositions by Gailey. The CD spent almost two years on the JazzWeek Radio Airplay charts and received very favorable reviews from JAZZIZ, JazzTimes and Cadence magazines, among others.

Dan has also directed all-state high school jazz ensembles in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington. He holds degrees from the University of Northern Colorado (MM) and Pacific Lutheran University (BM).

KU Jazz Ensemble I The University of Kansas Jazz Ensemble I, directed by Dan Gailey, is the flagship ensemble within the KU Jazz Studies program. In addition to their many awards, the ensemble performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City with internationally acclaimed vocalist Deborah Brown in April 2016, and the band was one of six college finalists nationwide that performed at the 2017 Monterey Next Generation Jazz Festival.

KU Jazz Ensemble I has had the distinction of performing with such noted guest artists as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Clark Terry, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Sean Jones, Kneebody, Steve Wilson, Dave Douglas, Louie Bellson, Tim Ries, Peter Erskine, Vince Mendoza, Conrad Herwig, Bob Sheppard, Gary Foster, Steve Houghton, Bob Mintzer, Bobby Shew, Carl Fontana, Dick Oatts, Frank Mantooth, Ingrid Jensen, Jon Hendricks, Pete Christlieb and many others.