| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | Contact: Helen Pinch, Performance Santa Fe Phone: (505) 984 8759 Email: hpinch@performancesantafe.org Promotional Photos Full Press Release |
Santa Fe, NM, September 21, 2022 – Three-time Grammy nominee Anat Cohen, a premiere jazz clarinetist, returns to Santa Fe with her newest ensemble: Anat Cohen Quartetinho. A product of Cohen’s long-time love for Brazilian music, deepened by her time in quarantine in Rio de Janeiro, the Quartetinho presents Brazilian, Israeli, and American music in conversation. The lively ensemble features Brazilian pianist Vitor Gonçalves on piano and accordion. Israeli guitarist Tal Mashiach joins on Brazilian 7-string nylon guitar. The group is completed by percussionist James Shipp, who plays vibraphone and adds an exciting electronic twist.
Anat Cohen Quartetinho
Thursday, October 20 | 7:30 p.m.
Lensic Performing Arts Center
211 W San Francisco St
Santa Fe, NM 87501
$35 – $115
To purchase tickets, visit www.performancesantafe.org or call (505) 984 8759
Presented through the generosity of Jane and Stephen Hochberg and our Season Sponsors, Ann Murphy Daily and William W. Daily; Leah Gordon
About the Artists
Ever charismatic, prolific, and inspired, GRAMMY-nominated clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen has won hearts and minds the world over with her expressive virtuosity and delightful stage presence. Anat has been declared Clarinetist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association every year since 2007 and has also been named the top clarinetist in both the readers and critics polls in DownBeat for multiple years running. As The Chicago Tribune has said about Anat, “The lyric beauty of her tone, easy fluidity of her technique and extroverted manner of her delivery make this music accessible to all.”
Since 2005, Anat’s series of releases via her Anzic Records label have seen the clarinetist-saxophonist range from infectious swingers to lilting balladry, from small groups to larger ensembles and back again, exploring a universe of music along the way. In her especially fertile 2017, Anat continued her love affair with Brazilian sounds by releasing two albums simultaneously via Anzic: Outra Coisa: The Music of Moacir Santos (with 7-string guitarist Marcello Gonçalves) and Rosa Dos Ventos (with Trio Brasileiro). In between large ensemble recordings with her Tentet, in March 2018 Anat and the acclaimed pianist Fred Hersch released their debut duo recording —Live in Healdsburg— of which Nate Chinen (WBGO) proclaimed “a beautiful document of mutual exchange, rooted in melody but alert to every possibility.”
Anat was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and raised in a musical family. She attended the Tel Aviv School for the Arts, the “Thelma Yellin” High School for the Arts, and the Jaffa Music Conservatory. Anat began clarinet studies at age 12 and played jazz on clarinet for the first time in the Jaffa Conservatory’s Dixieland band. At 16, she joined the school’s big band and learned to play the tenor saxophone; it was this same year that Anat entered the prestigious Thelma Yellin school, where she majored in jazz. After graduation, she discharged her mandatory Israeli military service duty from 1993-95, playing tenor saxophone in the Israeli Air Force band.
Through the World Scholarship Tour, Anat was able to attend the Berklee College of Music, where she honed her jazz chops and expanded her musical horizons. Moving to New York in 1999, Anat spent a decade touring with Sherrie Maricle’s all-woman big band, The Diva Jazz Orchestra; she also worked in such Brazilian groups as the Choro Ensemble and Duduka Da Fonseca’s Samba Jazz Quintet, along with performing the music of Louis Armstrong with David Ostwald’s Gully Low Jazz Band. In 2009, Anat became the first Israeli to headline at the Village Vanguard, the setting for perhaps the most celebrated live recordings in jazz history; the occasion yielded the 2010 release Clarinetwork: Live at the Village Vanguard.
However easy Anat makes it seem onstage, the mastery of any great art is a long, elusive challenge, and she teaches the fine points of jazz and the music of Brazil to budding students across North America. About her experiences onstage, in the classroom or just engaging with her listeners, Anat says: “Any day when I get to share music with people – other musicians, an audience – feels like a celebration to me.”
The Anat Cohen Tentet was slated to join Performance Santa Fe in May 2020; her performance was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Anat last performed in New Mexico with Performance Santa Fe alongside Fred Hersch in 2018.
Vitor Gonçalves is a pianist, accordionist, composer and arranger from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Vitor enjoyed an illustrious career as an in-demand musician in Brazil, playing with such icons as Hermeto Pascoal, Maria Bethânia, Itiberê Zwarg, and many others.
Since arriving in New York in 2012, where he earned his master’s degree at City College, Vitor has garnered much acclaim and built a star-lit resumé, including features in NPR’s Jazz Night in America, hosted by Christian McBride, and The New York Times as a guest of the renowned Spok Frevo Orquestra. A frequent resident on the stages of Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Jazz Standard, and the Jazz Gallery, he both leads his own projects, and collaborates with figures in the New York scene such as Anat Cohen, Vinícius Cantuária, Anthony Wilson, Cyro Baptista, and Yotam Silberstein. In 2017 he released his debut album on Sunnyside Records, Vitor Gonçalves Quartet, featuring Dan Weiss (drums), Thomas Morgan (bass), and Todd Neufeld (guitar).
Other groups he co-leads are SanfoNYa Brasileira, an accordion trio with Eduardo Belo on bass and Vanderlei Pereira on drums, and Regional de NY, one of the biggest representatives of Choro music in the United States. Both groups released an original album, the former with Steve Wilson as a guest and the latter with Fred Hersch.
Israeli guitarist, bissist, band leader, and composer Tal Mashiach was born and raised in Harashim, a small village in the Galilee mountains in northern Israel. He started his musical journey playing classical guitar at the age of 10. At the age of 18, Mashiach drafted to the Army as an exceptional musician. At that time, he started playing jazz on the double bass. In the winter of 2015, at the age of 21, Mashiach moved to New York after receiving a full scholarship from the New School.
In few years in the Big Apple Tal performed and toured with some of the biggest names in world music: Avishai Cohen, Anat Cohen, Mulatu Astake , Jason Lindner, Ravi Coltrane, Marcus Gilmor, Roman Diaz, Shai Maestro, Gilad Hekselman, Nasheet Waits, Daniel Friedman, Nir Felder, Justin Brown, Itamar Borochov, Hadar Noiberg, and more. Mashiach has played at the most prestigious venues and festivals around the world: Newport Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Summer Stage, Winter Jazzfest, Lincoln Center, Jazz Standard, and Miller Theatre. Beside his work as a sideman Tal is a composer, leading his own group, TM Street Band, and co-leading GTO Trio with Gadi Lehavi and Ofri Nehemia. Mashiach was awarded the prestigious AICF grants for jazz and classical music in the Period between 2006 – 2016, with an excellence grant in 2008/09 (classical guitar) and in 2014/15 (double bass).
James Shipp is a vibraphonist, a percussionist, a synthesist, and a songwriter. For the last decade-and-a-half he has performed, recorded, and toured the world with some of New York City’s best musicians. Trained as a jazz vibraphone soloist and accompanist, James’s post-conservatory interests have led him to become a sought-after Brazilian percussionist, a multi-instrumentalist in bands both mostly improvised and tightly arranged, a composer of music for experimental theater, and a versatile producer of recordings, bringing to bear his knowledge of both acoustic and analog electronic instruments on a wide range of projects.
James currently tours with the Anat Cohen Tentet, Jean Rohe and the End of the World Show, Banda Magda, the Nadje Noordhuis Quintet, and Christina Courtin (Pilot Violet). He has recorded and performed with Paquito d’Rivera, Kurt Elling, Snarky Puppy, Bokante, Kate McGarry, Becca Stevens, Bob Lanzetti, the Kronos Quartet, and Sting.
James has been a bandleader, composer, producer, and workshop facilitator for Carnegie Hall’s social impact programs for the last decade, working with thousands of people of all ages in prisons, jails, hospitals, shelters, and schools throughout New York City. James was a faculty artist at the Silk Road Ensemble’s 2016 Global Musician Workshop, where he taught Brazilian, Irish, and Finnish tunes to students from all over the world.
James earned both a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Music from the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music. He currently lives in Brooklyn and is very happy there.
ABOUT PERFORMANCE SANTA FE
Performance Santa has been bringing the very best of music, dance, and theater to iconic Santa Fe locations since 1937. Now in its 86th season, the organization upholds excellence in the performing arts and brings joy and enrichment to the community. Alongside its extensive performance season, the organization runs three dynamic, exciting, and inclusive educational programs for students in the community— Arts for Life, the Masterclass Series, and the Field Trip Series. PSF’s 2022-2023 season brings 26 performances to Santa Fe and celebrates the diverse possibilities of artistic expression. Learn more at www.PerformanceSantaFe.org. Performance Santa Fe is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
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