Elbphilharmonie Talk with Anat Cohen

In August 2023, the »Elbphilharmonie Jazz Academy« is back for its second edition. After the premiere in 2021, 15 hand-picked music students from all over the world now gather in the Elbphilharmonie for a week to draw inspiration from experienced improvisors, and to exchange insights with their contemporaries. The team of top-class instructors is led by Anat Cohen. She was born and raised in Israel, but has now lived in the USA for 20 years.

In the podcast, this wonderful musician, who originally also played the saxophone, explains why she now almost only ever plays the clarinet. She reveals the criteria by which she selected her brilliant colleagues for the »Jazz Academy« – Donny McCaslin (saxophone), Sullivan Fortner (piano), Matt Wilson (drummer), Martin Wind (double bass) and Clarice Assad (vocals, composition) – and which objectives she is pursuing with the jazz masterclass. Most important of all is the human element of music-making.

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For Cohen, it is when she is in Brazil that she is most aware of music’s power to bring people together. The cosmopolitan musician feels a strong connection to the collective magic of choro, of musica popular brasileira, indeed to all the rhythms, melodies and harmonies of Brazilian music. She plays this music wherever she can, be that in dingy little clubs in downtown New York or, as on 20 August, in the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall, where the 15 »Elbphilharmonie Jazz Academy« participants and their instructors are giving a public closing concert.