For the past two decades, the Holy Land has produced a bounty of outstanding jazz musicians who pulled up their roots and replanted themselves in the New World, especially in New York, where a strong Israeli contingent thrives.
Notable jazz musicians of Israeli origin will be showcased at the Rex Jazz and Blues Bar in Toronto on March 18. Two New York-based artists, clarinet and saxophone player Anat Cohen and pianist Guy Mintus, with their bands, are featured on a bill along with Toronto bassist Kobi Hass. A former Tel Aviv resident, Hass will be leading a quartet of local musicians.
The evening’s headliner is Cohen, an internationally acclaimed artist who has topped critics and readers polls in the clarinet category in DownBeat magazine every year since 2011.
Cohen, 39, said when she began studying clarinet at the age of 12 while attending the Jaffa conservatory, she never imagined that “she would become a professional musician and that the clarinet would take her around the world.” She added that at the time, the clarinet “was out of fashion” because it was associated with old-style swing and folk music.
At 16, Cohen joined the conservatory’s big band and learned to play saxophone, out of necessity. “There was no clarinet chair in the big band, so the conductor said, ‘Why don’t you go to the storage room and pick up a tenor sax,’” she said. DownBeat has named Cohen a rising star in the soprano and tenor saxophone categories several times.
Cohen has two brothers who are also accomplished jazz musicians – the trumpeter, Avishai, and the saxophonist, Yuval. She records with her brothers under the band name 3 Cohens.
She said playing with her brothers is amazing because they know one another well and meshing musically comes naturally. “It takes years to develop this kind of intimacy with musicians,” she said.
In 1996, Cohen left Israel to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she was introduced to New Orleans-style jazz, African grooves and Brazilian music by her classmates, styles she learned by immersing herself in the music. At the Rex with her quartet, Cohen will play selections from her latest recording Luminosa, which features several Brazilian numbers and original material.
Opening the Rex’s jazz showcase is upright and electric bass player Kobi Hass. He’s worked in bands that have backed up some well-known Israeli pop rock singers, among them Leah Shabat, Gali Atarai, Bridget Habib and Riki Gal. Hass picked up his first electric bass by chance, while he was studying choir conducting at Tel Aviv University,
“I ran into someone who wanted to sell a bass,” he said. “I realized I could make a good living playing the bass.” He was already an established bass player when he spent four years studying jazz at Berklee College of Music.
Hass, 59, who moved to Toronto with his family in 2010, has been playing at the city’s clubs, backing up singers, subbing for the bassist in the group Jaffa Road and getting into jazz seriously.
He said that he and three other local musicians, pianist Barry Livingstone, drummer Paul Fitterer and Ernie Tollar on saxophone and flute, have been meeting at his house to play jazz just for fun. “Slowly we got our own sound,” Hass said.
At the Rex, the quartet, with Hass on upright bass, will perform some of his original compositions, as well as Livingstone’s.
To round out the program at the Rex, pianist Guy Mintus, 23, leads a trio of America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship winners. Mintus is a recipient of the Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award by ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and of two DownBeat student awards for outstanding jazz performance and arrangement. He is dedicated to exploring and stretching the boundaries between musical traditions and various art disciplines.
The Israeli Jazz Showcase is presented by the Toronto Jazz Festival and the Israel Consulate General, Toronto and Western Canada, and is part of the Spotlight on Israeli Culture showcase (www.spotlightonisraeliculture.ca). Tickets are available at the Rex only on the night of the performance, March 18. Admission is $20. Cash sales only. Showtime is 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 416-598-2475.
