The Family That Plays Together...

by Eric Herschthal
Staff Writer

The JVC Jazz Festival, which began this week and runs through June 28, is New York’s longest-running summer jazz series, and its most prestigious. And that has come at a price; namely, one of obligations. Since its founding in 1972 by George Wein, who also founded the storied Newport Jazz Festival almost 20 years prior, it has increasingly featured musicians with lofty resumes: the Keith Jarretts, Lee Konitzes and Branford Marsalises of the world.

But that is changing, or at least beginning to, this year. Wein sold the company that runs the festival last year and merged it with another, larger one. The festival will continue to promote known greats — Herbie Hancock, Cecil Taylor, Bill Frisell and many others jazz titans are

on this year’s bill — but it will also feature a crop of rising stars whom jazz fans are just getting to know.

One of the most anticipated is the Israeli-born sibling group called the 3 Cohens. The sextet features Yuval, 35, on soprano saxophone, younger sister Anat, 33, on clarinet and tenor saxophone, and the youngest, Avishai, 30, on trumpet. (Aaron Goldberg plays piano; Omer Avital plays bass and Eric Harland is on drums on a new album. But the concert will feature a different rhythm section.) The 3 Cohens’ June 25 performance at the New York Society for Ethical Culture has been highlighted in several publications already, and their second album together, “Braid,” released last November, has won legions of critical praise. “There’s such a thing as a family sound,” Ben Ratliff wrote in his review for The New York Times, “and the musicians calling themselves the 3 Cohens have it.”

What “it” is, is a studied confluence of jazz genres that stretches from Dixieland foxtrots and searching post-bop melodic scales, to the Latin rhythms of Brazilian choro and the Argentine tango. Given Anat’s penchant for the clarinet — she won Downbeat’s poll last year for Rising Star on the instrument, which she plays on a few of the album’s 10 tracks — the klezmer influence is apparent. Avishai, who occasionally leads his own popular funk-jazz band in Israel, and Yuval, the only one who still lives there, fold in Middle Eastern sounds too. The seamlessness of it all defies any hyphenated identity.

When reached for an interview by phone, the three siblings were less than an hour away from going on stage at the Caesarea Jazz Festival, on Israel’s Mediterranean coast. They were very happy to talk, though, and Avishai got on the phone, his brother’s cell, first.
How did you three decide to record an album together? “It was an idea that was there for a long time,” Avishai said. “But it wasn’t a priority,” he said; they all were pursuing separate careers. Avishai, for instance, was trying to make it in New York after graduating from the Berklee College of Music in Boston in the late-1990s, like his two siblings before him. He worked nightly gigs at Smalls, a West Village club where many up-and-coming jazz performers hone their chops. He also recently released two recordings of a three-part series called “The Big Rain Trilogy.” But in late 2002, Yuval, who had moved back to Tel Aviv not long after graduating from Berklee in 1997, had a gig in Poland. “It was his idea to bring us all there,” Avishai said.

So it happened that all three Cohens were on stage together, playing like they use to in their parents’ home. The next year they recorded “ONE,” their self-released debut album. The reviews weren’t forthcoming though. But they liked playing together and continued to do so in international festivals. Still, professionally, they continued pursuing separate paths.

Yuval got on the phone next. It’s been said that he is the most intense of the three. Yuval picked up the saxophone at a very young age and practiced religiously. He went to a Jaffa conservatory and then the prestigious Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, an institution known for its rigorous teaching of the jazz canon — New Orleans jazz, swing, bebop and the blues. Anat and Avishai later followed suit.

Is it true? Did you push your brother and sister to play jazz? Not really, he said, at least not explicitly. But he was exacting in his preparation. “Maybe it’s a symptom of [being] first-born, but most first-borns suffer from Serious Syndrome,” Yuval said. “I was really serious about the practice, and really working hard.” He was one of the first generation of Israelis to get a scholarship to Berklee in Boston, which has a renowned jazz program.
Larry Monroe, the vice president for international programs at Berklee who has held auditions annually in Israel since the early-1990s, said of all the Cohens, “They were all ahead of their time. This is an extraordinary family.” But he said the professionalism of the musicians is not unique. Berklee now has roughly 25 Israelis out of 900 international students, a disproportionate number given the country’s small size. He surmised that this may be due to three factors: the stern standards at the country’s music schools, its tight-knit music community and the fact that Israelis are generally very self-critical. “They don’t let ego get in the way,” Monroe said, adding, “If I had only 24 hours to find a jazz musician, I’d go to Tel Aviv first.”

I asked Yuval why he didn’t stay in New York like Avishai and Anat? He said doctors discovered a benign tumor on his spine in 1997, which needed to be removed. After he had the surgery, he lost feeling in one of his arms and could no longer play the saxophone.

“Without having any other choice,” he said, “I had to do something with myself, so I went to law school in Tel Aviv.” (This time, his younger siblings did not follow suit.) “But I felt out of place,” he went on. He continued to play with his saxophone, first as a rehab tool and later as an instrument with the help of a special device he had built to keep his damaged hand on the keys. A few years after graduating law school, he was back playing with a new quartet in weekly gig in Tel Aviv. He was also teaching jazz composition at Thelma Yellin.

But he says he will never be back to his pre-operation form. “I’m playing different now. I don’t have the same technical ability.” (His playing on a track like “Freedom” on the new “Braid” album belies that fact.) Do you miss New York? “Everyone wants to make it in New York,” he answered. “We” — his local group — “play [in Israel]. It’s small, but we like it here.”

It was almost time for the Caesarea show, and Anat had just a few fleeting moments to speak. But her story is better known. Last year she released two albums simultaneously on the Anzic Records label she co-founded in 2005. (“Braid” is also released on Anzic Records.) Both records, “Poetica” and “Noir,” were instant hits, almost universally praised in the press. She was featured on NPR and got gigs at the Jazz Standard and the Village Vanguard, becoming the first female horn player ever to lead a group at the latter, a historic jazz spot.

Might your personal success impinge on your work with your brothers now? “Things happen when they happen,” she said. “I’m always excited to play with my brothers.” Plus, she said, when she had her stay at the Vanguard, she had Avishai play with her group there every night.

In fact, when the 3 Cohens play Wednesday night in New York, it will technically be a concert for “The Anat Cohen Quartet,” the official program billing. (Half of the concert is also devoted to another female-led group, the Esperanza Spalding Quartet; Spalding is a rarity in jazz, a woman bassist.) But Anat invited her brothers too, and they will play tunes from “Braid.”

Is there any competition among them now? If so, none of them gave even a hint of it. As Yuval said earlier: “If Anat takes it one way, we’ll flow that way. If Avishai takes it another way, we’ll go there. We just let the three melodies blend together, braid together. It’s true that we all have our own tendencies, but we all have a common ground.” n

The Anat Cohen Quartet, with special guests Avishai and Yuval Cohen, share a double bill with the Esparanza Spalding Quartet, at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 W. 64th St. at Central Park West. Wednesday, June 25, 8 p.m. Tickets sold online at www.ticketmaster.com. $40-$45.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization