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WoodshedSOLOby Jimi DursoAnat Cohen’s Virtuosic ClarinetSolo on ‘Cry Me A River’Anat Cohen delivers a spectacular clarinet soloon the standard “Cry Me A River,” from her2007 album Noir (Anzic Records). Cohen notonly showcases her technical virtuosity on theinstrument, but also her musicality.One aspect she demonstrates is her expansiverange. Not only does her solo span overthree octaves, from the low E♭ in Bar 10 to thevery high G that appears in measures 20 and 24,but often Cohen plays runs that traverse anoctave or more (measures 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15,18, 20, 21, 22, 25, 27). Especially noteworthyare the flourishes in measures 20 and 21, whereshe runs a scale first from F# to a higher G inthe space of one beat, and then in the next measureruns the scale down from G to a low F#.Notice also how Cohen uses her range, notflaunting it all at once but reserving it for musicaleffect. For the first 15 bars her lines keepbouncing off high A♭, A, B♭ and C. It isn’t untilmeasure 17 that a high D finally shows up, andthen this (and the E♭ in the same measure)becomes the high point until the highest G finallyenters in measure 20, a little over halfwaythrough her solo. She returns to this high pitch atthe start of the last A section, and holds it for afull measure. The earlier run was just hinting atthis climax.Cohen shows a tendency to resolve herlines to chord tones on strong beats. She landson roots in measures 2, 5, 15, 19, 20 and 27,thirds in measures 7 and 10, and fifths in measures11, 18 and 24. After all this emphasis onchord tones, Cohen wraps up her entire solo byresolving to a ninth, which she has not doneanywhere else in the solo. Also worth observingis that although most of these resolutionsoccur on downbeats, she sometimes comes toAnatCohenrest on the third (measures 2, 19, and 27) andfourth (5) beats.Cohen also builds her solo with scalar choices.The first nine measures are almost exclusivelythe C blues scale, with an emphasis on theflatted fifth. The next six measures are moremodal, within C Aeolian but with some chromaticismbased on the chord changes. There isthe E natural and A natural, which are the thirdsagainst the C7 and F7 in measures 12 and 13,and the flat and sharp ninths on the B♭7 chord inmeasure 10. Significantly, there are also flatsixths on the B♭7s in bars 10 and 14, which is thesame pitch as the flat fifth she had used so muchin the earlier section.In the second half of measure 15, Cohenplays a G melodic minor run leading into thebridge. Here the song shifts to the key of Gminor, and with the E natural as the fifth of Am7and the F# as the third of D7, G melodic minorfits the chords of this section particularly well.Cohen plays this scale almost exclusively(adding E♭s in a few places as the flat ninth onthe D chord, creating the harmonic minor scale)up until measure 22, where she starts playing anascending chromatic run that spans two octavesover two measures, slowly and inevitably climbingup to the climax in measure 24.For the last eight, Cohen recaps the elementsshe’s already set up, but not in such a sectionalmanner. There are measures of blues scale (25,26, 30), C Aeolian (27, 29) and chromatic runs(28, 31). A very intriguing lick can be found inmeasure 26, where Cohen implies a counterpointby creating a chromatic lower line thatgoes from C to B to B♭, with upper blues scalelicks inserted between those notes.DBOSNAT ROMJimi Durso is a guitarist and bassist in the NewYork area. He can be reached at jimidurso.com.68 DOWNBEAT August 2009