ODED LEV-ARI

“The album unfolds as a series of vignettes from a party, each song catching a different color or mood: wild, bittersweet, glamorous, unruly, wistful, tender. Duchess stays true to their credo: The party is still here, and no one is taking the good times for granted.”

All-Star Jazz Trio The 3 Cohens — Featuring Siblings Anat Cohen (Clarinet), Avishai Cohen (Trumpet), Yuval Cohen (Saxophone) — Return with Interaction, a Live Album with Germany’s Venerable WDR Big Band.

"★★★★★ musicianship of the highest order"
—DownBeat

"conductor/arranger and 4th-Cohen whiz kid Lev-Ari hurls the whole ensemble into the breach, curating a run of brilliant music-making"
—All About Jazz

"animated and precise…nothing short of exceptional"
—Take Effect

"An exhilarating listen from beginning to end, it highlights Lev-Ari's writing panache, the siblings' remarkable chemistry and the WDR Big Band's many strengths."
—All About Jazz

"Germany’s venerable WDR Big Band... performs this tricky material with its usual élan."
—Jazz Journal

Quartetinho: Bloom. The band name is Portuguese for “little quartet,” although the players make a big, color-rich sound, each an ace on multiple instruments: Anat on various clarinets, Tal Mashiach on bass and guitar, Vitor Gonçalves on piano and accordion, and James Shipp on vibraphone and percussion.

From Nicky:

“At times, living in different cities has tested my ability to find a sense of belonging in any one place.

I was born in London and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. I moved to New York City to attend the Manhattan School of Music for graduate studies. After five years in the Big Apple, I then moved back to London and Cape Town before setting my sights on Toronto, Canada in 2020. I was armed with experience and the desire to forge meaningful musical relationships with like-minded musicians. This music is the result of that wish.”

A group of New York-based international multi instrumentalist-virtuosos are all drawn from the ranks of her GRAMMY-nominated Tentet featuring bassist Tal Mashiach, pianist/accordionist Vitor Gonçalves, and vibraphonist/percussionist James Shipp in a boundlessly melodic and lyrical release, with a wide array of timbres and subtle details of orchestration.

In their second duo album, following the Grammy-nominated release Outra Coisa: The Music for Moacir Santos, Brazilian 7-string guitar player Gonçalves and New York-based clarinetist Cohen turn their attention to music from the Música Popular Brasileira (MPB) songbook.

Featuring soloists soprano Rebecca L Hargrove and narrator Kenneth Browning, the undefinable work, written in Phillips signature "mixed music" style, chronicles a single Black mother and her son for a dynamic exploration of race, class and power in 21st century America.

As Phillips explains, The Grey Land is "a story of a Black mother trying to survive the reality in this land that doesn’t fully see her continued hope: that the great American experiment will one day become a belonging place where anyone can dream of 'stillness and stars' free from fear and want; a place where the beautiful promise of happiness, liberty, and life may yet manifest true to finally include her family too."

Arranged and conducted the live version of Paul Taylor’s Company B for the Paul Taylor Dance Company for their 2017 Lincoln Center season.

Cervini puts her stamp on songs “that have resonated with me as a mother, as a partner, and as a woman,” she writes in her album notes. “They are songs about love, struggle, and empowerment.”

Conceived by neuroscientist Beau Lotto and musician Oded Lev-Ari and presented by NationalSawdust+. “The Perception of Beauty,” was an evening of audience experiments, musical demonstrations, and conversation that reveal the invisible matrix that govern the way we experience sound, investigate notions of beauty, and explore imperfection.

The first album from the Anat Cohen Tentet - a large format ensemble co-led by Anat Cohen and Oded Lev-Ari. The ensemble made its debut at the Jazz Standard in Manhattan and the famed Newport Jazz Festival in 2017. DownBeat Critics Poll ranked it #2 Jazz Album of the Year in the 66th Annual Critics Poll.

“her most ambitious album yet” ★★★★½
—DownBeat

“This set is a tour-de-force.”
—London Jazz News
“unfettered joy in music-making”
—World Music Report

“5 stars”
—Jazz’n more

The Anat Cohen Tentet is a large format ensemble of ace musicians that made its debut at the Jazz Standard in Manhattan and the famed Newport Jazz Festival in 2017 with the album Happy Song.

"truly formidable crossweaves"…an original and deeply affecting work…fresh, sophisticated and daring"
—JazzTimes

"a work of considerable expressive reach…a sensuous tonal palette"
—Chicago Tribune

"arguably to a career high for Cohen…one sweeping and powerful statement"
—DownBeat

"bejeweled arrangements…ambitious endeavor"
—All About Jazz

"beautiful and dynamically varied sounds…real incandescence throughout the recording"
—Jazz da Gama

"at the top of her game…soaring and adventurous throughout…nothing short of brilliant"
—CITY Magazine

Recorded live at Jazz Standard: May 7 & 8, 2019.

Vocal group Duchess’s second studio album.

4 stars from Down Beat and the rave that this album “could be a classic,” Cohen’s ten-song program unfolds like a timeless pan-American epic film score.

Debut album as a leader, released by Anzic Records, featuring original compositions and an arrangement of Gordon Jenkins’s Goodbye for a chamber-jazz ensemble.

Sure-footed swing, sweet-toned harmony and ever-insouciant charm are embodied in the new jazz vocal trio Duchess, featuring notable New York singers Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner and Melissa Stylianou. The group’s debut album – Duchess, channels the 1930s inspiration of the virtuosic Boswell Sisters into a wonderfully entertaining and contemporary package. Produced and arranged by Oded Lev-Ari, who helmed previous acclaimed Anzic releases by Cervini and Stylianou, Duchess pairs the vocal trio with an ace New York band: pianist Michael Cabe, bassist Paul Sikivie and drummer Matt Wilson, plus saxophonist Jeff Lederer and guitarist Jessie Lewis.

Innovative and electrifying, Toronto jazz drummer Ernesto Cervini has energy to burn, whether radiating it from behind his kit or working on any number of musical and educational projects. Turboprop features Cervini’s regular quartet with Joel Frahm on Tenor Saxophone, Adrean Farrugia on Piano, Dan Loomis on Bass and Cervini on Drums, and adds Tara Davidson on Alto Saxophone and William Carn on Trombone. The band's sound is reminiscent to the hard swinging Jazz Messenger bands of Art Blakey, although they tackle a wide range of music from Charlie Parker to Claude Debussy to Radiohead, as well as originals from all the band members.

The fifth album from singer Melissa Stylianou – No Regrets – is all about the joy of spontaneity and making the most of the moment. The Canadian-born, New York-based vocalist recorded a set of jazz standards and other favorites in a live-to-two-track, noon-to-night studio session – old-school – backed by an ultra-simpatico trio of New York all-stars: pianist Bruce Barth, double-bassist Linda Oh and drummer Matt Wilson, with stylish guest spots by clarinetist Anat Cohen and alto saxophonist Billy Drewes.

"This is the most ambitious recording I have done to date as a composer. These compositions, written over a twenty-year period, receive wonderful performances from these A-list musicians, many of whom I have worked with for thirty years and more. Each piece approaches the jazz orchestra in different ways. The music on this recording presents the fullest range yet of my creative passions." —Marty Ehrlich

This is the first program devoted entirely to the orchestral music of Marty Ehrlich. It displays the characteristics that have marked his success as an instrumentalist, composer, and bandleader: strong melodic invention and a keen ear for instrumental color, creative curiosity embracing disciplines beyond music, extreme sensitivity to those with whom he collaborates, formal inventiveness that enhances rather than obscures expressive intent, and an unblinking yet ultimately affirmative insistence on connecting his music with realities both historic and contemporary.

The best jazz groups are made up of kindred spirits, but the rare family band has something more – an intuitive feel for each other that goes beyond words and gestures to a kind of bred-in-the-bone telepathy. The 3 Cohens are that sort of uncommon collective, a trio of siblings – tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Anat Cohen, trumpeter Avishai Cohen and soprano saxophonist Yuval Cohen – whose sense of improvisational interplay is both uncannily fluent and wonderfully, infectiously warm. In Tightrope the group digs deep to explore this connection in an unaccompanied setting. Stellar guests Fred Hersch, Christian McBride and Jonathan Blake individually add their voices to the conversation.

It can be easily forgotten sometimes, but stories – telling them, hearing them – are at the heart of why we make music and are moved by it. Singer Melissa Stylianou feels this deep down, and with her fourth album – Silent Movie – she moves closer than ever to the essence of storytelling in song. Stylianou renews standards long beloved in jazz – “Smile,” “Moon River,” “The Folks Who Live on the Hill” – even as she helps broaden the field by putting a personal spin on songs by James Taylor, Paul Simon, Johnny Cash and Joanna Newsom, accompanied by such top New York players as saxophonist/clarinetist Anat Cohen. Channeling a venerable tradition in jazz, Stylianou also puts her own lyrics to the music of celebrated composers, breathing fresh emotional life into instrumental pieces by Edgar Meyer and Vince Mendoza. And the album’s affecting title track is a new Stylianou co-composition that underscores why Downbeat magazine described her as “an original.”

"forefront of contemporary vocalists…a stunning study in regret"
—JazzTimes

"exquisite musical moments…beautifully produced, refreshing recording"
—The WholeNote

"arrangiamenti impeccabili" ("impeccable arrangements")
—All About Jazz Italy

"storytelling voice, lyrical and lush…consistent in its beauty"
—Jazz Society of Oregon

"unmannered and affecting jazz singer…a taste for choice material"
—The New Yorker

Amy Cervini re-envisions the vintage art of “jazz pixie” Blossom Dearie via a contemporary sensibility of her in her homage to her childhood idol.

The Amy Cervini Quartet (ACQ) effortlessly journeys through an eclectic mix of songs from The Cardigans, Depeche Mode, and Jack Johnson to American Songbook favorites “Comes Love” and “Bye Bye Country Boy”