Noir

Anat Cohen is a first-class musician and composer. Her mastery of all her instruments gives this album great variety and continuity as she shifts between clarinets and saxophones. And anyone who includes a Sun Ra composition, You Never Told Me That You Care, gets five stars from me. I first learned about Anat Cohen from my mother who had read about her. I have at least 4 of her CDs and listen to them all in my gym rotation. The accompanying arrangements of Oded Lev-Ari with the Anzic Orchestra give Anat the support and the space to do what she does best: cast a spell with her innovative playing. Every album of Anat Cohen's is terrific, and Noir is no exception. A terrific place to begin what will be a life-time enchantment with her playing and her music.

I get to hear a lot of talent these days. People who have mastered it all - including people like Anat's brother Avishai. But it's very rare that you get to hear such talent coupled with powerful emotion and superb control - which is what, according to me is real music. Anat's music is the kind that gets to your bones. This album is special - her best.

Anat Cohen is the next Benny Goodman although being Jewish and playing the clarinet are probably the only things they have in common. I love it when she plays familiar songs and takes them to new places while still respecting the melody.

recording is really nice music. the quality of the CD makes me think it is not an original but a copy.

The album deserves 5 stars due to the fantastic talent of Anat Cohen ( this message should be conveyed to her ), and the is excellant.

Excellent--I'd give it six stars if that was possible. Impeccable skills and so full of soul and passion.

This CD provides a wonderful example of the style and grace to her music. I've added a vibrant set of tracks to my collection.

Purchased Notes From The Village and liked it so much I added Noir to my collection and I haven't been disappointed.

I was tempted by this album having previously heard clarinetist Anat Cohen's brilliant, unbooted "Notes from the village" and was intrigued to hear what she might sound like wailing in front of a big band. Clarinetist's fronting such ensembles have a great pedigree with the likes of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Woody Herman all springing to mind. However, this album is really curious insofar that Cohen's orchestra covers are far wider range of bases with tracks like "Inguneo" barely being jazz at all. In fact, more orthodox forms of jazz only seem to be part of the many components of "Noir." For want of a better description, this is very much a "chamber jazz ensemble." The problem largely rests with some of the writing by fellow Israeli Oded Lev-Ari whose charts seem oddly conservative and sometime reminescent of the kind of music played by the likes of Gary McFarland or even Gerry Mulligan in the 1960's - the kind of jazz before the more innovative minds of that decade kicked down the complacent stereotypes that had preceded. At worse, the music becomes aural wall-paper. Cohen is fascinating in the respect that she is one of a band of soloists / writers who have re-invigorated the mainstreamand making it relevent to the 21st Century but Lev-Ari's arranging perhaps hasn't quite managed to make the same kind of leap. She is a player who I would suggest could appeal equally to someone more familiar with BG (with whose later work Cohen shares a similar timbre on her principle horn) but capable to appealing to more contemporary audiences too. Tracks like the Johnny Griffin number "Do it" do not lack bite and the album's stand out number "Cry me a river" re-casts Cohen's clarinet as the teasing tempress. I love this later arrangement. These would score highly for me. I also quite liked the fact that the ending of "Struttin' with some barbecue" copied that of the Louis Armstrong Hot Five recordings and thought that that was a nice touch too. Elsewhere, the use of three cellos to flesh out the band almost result in muzak as something like "Cry" demonstrates. Again, this sounds like something from another era. The number of Brazilan tunes also robs the music of some of the poke that is abundant on the "Notes from the village" disc which is definately the one to go for. Elements of "Ingueno" almost slip into a light-music vein which would appeal to classical music fans looking to broaden their palette. I didn't feel that Cohen got much chance to burn quite like those familiar with her other work know that she is capable of. I love Cohen's sound on clarinet but she also dabbles with the tenor (again, nowhere near as devastatingly as on "Note from the village" record), soprano and alto, which the liner suggests, recalls the woefully neglected but exceptional none-the-less,swing era player Tab Smith. It is great that there are now so many women are emerging on the jazz scene, not only holding their own against their male counterparts, but often very much in the forefront as is the case with the likes of Geri Allen, Esperanza Spalding, or Maria Schneider to think of three examples off the top of my head. I would definately add Cohen to this list but "Noir" is not the dark, brooding masterpiece that the title suggests and perhaps a tad too polite to make this an essential purchase. All in all, this is an inoffensive record but surely this is not the point of the music which is supposed to be "the sound of surprise?"