Multifaceted American jazz pianist and composer Emmet Cohen is one of his generation’s pivotal artistic figures. Downbeat praised the “nimble touch, measured stride and warm harmonic vocabulary” he employs to communicate with other musicians and audiences at “the deepest level of humanity and individuality.” Cohen plays with the command and passion of an artist fully devoted to his medium.
He presents jazz performance lectures through the YoungArts Foundation and Lincoln Center’s “Jazz for Young People” program. Cohen has appeared at the Monterey, Newport, North Sea, Bern, and Edinburgh jazz festivals, among others, and at many famous music venues, including Rose Hall and the Kennedy Center.
He has also played in legendary international nightspots, such as Birdland, the Blue Note, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Jazzhaus Montmartre, Ronnie Scott’s and is the Hammond B-3 organist-in-residence at Harlem’s Smoke jazz club. Cohen holds jazz piano degrees from the Manhattan School of Music (M.M.) and the University of Miami (B.M.). In 2019 he won the American Pianists Association’s Cole Porter Fellowship and in 2011 the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition. He has performed or collaborated with Debbie Allen, Ron Carter, Jimmy Cobb, Lea DeLaria, Kurt Elling, Billy Hart, Jimmy Heath, Ali Jackson, Bill T. Jones, Brian Lynch, Christian McBride, and Herlin Riley. Learn more about Emmet at www.emmetcohen.com