Acclaimed Jazz Musician Anat Cohen at St. Cecelia December 10

Fantastic jazz is coming back to St. Cecelia Music Center.

Dynamic Bandleader and emotionally passionate clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen and her Quartet will open St. Cecilia Music Center’s eighth season of their Jazz Series  with  “Celebrando Brasil: From Rio to Minas” on December 10, 2015.

This will be the perfect setting for Cohen who is one of the leading clarinetists of her generation, adept at everything from Dixieland to Brazilian music. Her quartet includes Gary Versace on piano and Fender Rhodes, bassist Joe Martin and Daniel Freedman on drums.

Featured on more than 21 albums, Cohen released her seventh record as a bandleader earlier this year on her label Anzic Records entitled Luminosa. Luminosa features Cohen playing singing/dancing originals, Brazilian classics by the likes of Milton Nascimento, and even re-imagining electronica as acoustica with an ingenious arrangement of a Flying Lotus tune. Luminosa showcases Cohen’s world beat influences spanning from Afro-Cuban, Argentinean, Klezmer, contemporary Brazilian music and classic Brazilian choro.

Voted Clarinetist of the Year for 8 years in a row by the Jazz Journalists Association, Cohen has also topped both the Critics and Readers Polls in the clarinet category in DownBeat magazine every year since 2011. Cohen has headlined at the legendary jazz venue the Village Vanguard and performed at every major Jazz Festival in the U.S. including Newport, Umbria, San Francisco and North Sea Jazz Festivals. In 2014 she served as the Music Director for the “Newport Jazz Festival Now 60! All-Star Band Tour.”

Concert tickets for the Jazz Series Concert with the Anat Cohen Quintet are $38 and $43 and can be purchased by calling St. Cecilia Music Center at 616-459-2224 or visiting the box office at 24 Ransom Ave. NE. Tickets can also be purchased online at www.scmc-online.org. A post-concert “Meet-the-artists” reception with a cash bar will be offered to all ticket-holders giving the audience the opportunity to meet Anat Cohen and her accompanying artists, and obtain signed CDs of her releases.