Jazz clarinet virtuoso Anat Cohen tipped me off about this album last November, when we met in Decorah, Iowa. My wife and I happened to be staying at the same motel as her band, the Anat Cohen Tentet, which performed at Luther College. During breakfast the day after the show, we talked about this and that, and the new memoir by pianist and composer Fred Hersch, Good Things Happen Slowly, which we both were reading (12-15-17 AJW). And Anat mentioned sotto voce that she would be releasing an album of duo recordings with Hersch. Live in Healdsburg (Anzic Records) showcases the prodigious talents of two leading lights in jazz today. The renditions of the eight songs sometimes put you in mind of bees flitting around in a flower garden. Every moment on each track is rewarding. The solos on “The Peacocks,” by Jimmy Rowles, are hauntingly beautiful. This gets all the stars. — Mordecai Specktor
(American Jewish World, 3.9.18)
