Anat Cohen’s <I>Poetica</I>, on her own Anzic Records label, is a fresh breeze of an album, and I mean that in a good way. Still in her 20s, Cohen plays clarinet with a polished edge and verve second only to Don Byron’s. Born in Tel Aviv, schooled at Berklee, honed in New York clubs, playing not just modern jazz but Brazilian Choro and Dixieland, she lets all her influences show but none of them dominate. Her tone bears something of klezmer’s lilt but none of its schmaltz. Her arrangements have the joyful-melancholic sway of Israeli or Latin folk music but none of its sentimentality. On the album, she also plays two knottily catchy original tunes, a Jacques Brel song, and a tinglingly lovely cover of Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament,” the last backed by a string quartet. The sound, mixed by Joe Ferla and mastered by Sony’s Mark Wilder, is excellent.

When Fred Kaplan made his <I>Stereophile</I> debut with his review of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/307rogue">Rogue Audio Atlas power amplifier</A> last March, our scheme was also to publish his writings on the music that fuels his soul, jazz. Starting this past weekend, you can find Fred's thoughts on recordings, concerts, musicians, and the music at <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/fredkaplan/">http://blog.stereophile.com/fr…;.

The 10th annual The Home Entertainment Show (T.H.E. Show), which will run January 7&ndash;10, 2008, concurrent with the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), has expanded its exhibit space to include both the completely renovated Alexis Park Resort Hotel and its neighbor, the St. Tropez Hotel. By using both venues, T.H.E. Show, in effect, throws down the gauntlet to CES, which last year abandoned its traditional high-end audio home at the Alexis Park and moved High-Performance Audio to the Venetian Hotel.