A natural improviser from a very young age, it was not until her late teens that Anat Fort discovered the depth of jazz. The next step was coming to the US to study with people who were part of shaping up this music, such as Harold Mabern, Rufus Reid, Norman Simmons and Paul Bley. In 1999 she formed her working band, the Anat Fort trio, with bassist Gary Wang and drummer Roland Schneider, and self-produced her first CD, “Peel”. 2019 marks the 20th anniversary of the Anat Fort trio, which has since toured throughout the US, Europe, Canada, Israel and China in major venues and festivals (Montreal, Birdland, Porgy and Bess, NDR, Tel-Aviv Opera House and many more).

Anat received composition grants from the “Jerome Foundation”, “Meet the Composer”, “The Rabinovitch Foundation” and others. She has played with many jazz greats such as Paul Motian, Ed Schuller and Perry Robinson with whom she recorded her second CD, “A Long Story”, in 2004.This collaboration brought her to the attention of ECM Records producer Manfred Eicher who decided to produce the recording without having initially been in the studio; a rare occurrence. The CD came out in 2007 and received outstanding reviews worldwide. The collaboration with ECM has since continued on two more CD’s, “And If” (2010) and “Birdwatching” (2016), both featuring her original compositions. In April 2019 she released “Colour”, a celebration of her trio’s 20 years of playing together, on Sunnyside Records.

Anat has been collaborating with vocalist-composer Ayelet Rose Gottlieb since 2005 and their CD of lullabies in Hebrew, “Two more dreams”, came out in 2017. She recently completed a PhD in composition at the Bar –Ilan University. In December 2018 she won the prestigious Prime Minister jazz composers award in Israel and became the first woman to ever win the prize.