In 2007, an Israeli musician in her early 30s was named “Clarinetist of the Year” by the Jazz Journalists Association.
Anat Cohen earned the accolade again in 2008. And 2009. And 2010. And every year since then, including 2025.
Nearly two decades since that first recognition, Cohen is widely seen as an unstoppable force in jazz, known for bringing collaborative, vivid ensemble playing to the stage. Tablet magazine has described her as a “master of expressive improvisation.”
In December, Cohen will appear in San Francisco for two dates as part of a tour to celebrate her 50th birthday. She’ll share the stage with Brazilian guitarist Marcello Gonçalves and 10 other performers, including musical director Oded Lev-Ari, a fellow Israeli.
Cohen was born in Tel Aviv into a musical family. Her brothers Avishai and Yuval are also pros. She picked up the clarinet at 12 and later enrolled in conservatory, where her introduction to jazz came through a Dixieland band. She’s also adept on the tenor saxophone.
“I fell in love with the feeling of swing,” she said of those years in a 2011 interview with JazzTimes. “I think coming from a classical music background I put an emphasis on ensemble playing.”
As Bay Area journalist Andrew Gilbert wrote in San Francisco Classical Voice in 2022, Cohen has a “capacious and cosmopolitan body of work ranging across jazz idioms and hybrid styles, from Benny Goodman tributes and cinematic orchestral suites to post-bop quintets and chamber settings for jazz and string quartets.”
She attended Israel’s Thelma Yellin School of the Arts, then came to the U.S. to attend Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music after her service in the Israeli military. She later moved to New York, where she rocketed to success, recognized for her virtuosity and her ability to create joyous moments out of pure love for jazz.
In a March review of one of Cohen’s 50th birthday concerts, JazzTimes said “feel-good moments are few and far between these days, and artists like Anat Cohen are unicorns.”