Multifaceted American jazz pianist and composer Emmet Cohen is the founder of the Emmet Cohen Trio. Cohen began playing the Suzuki method at the age of 3 and his playing quickly gained maturity, musicality, technique and concept. Downbeat notes that Cohen’s “nimble touch on the keys, even stride, and warm harmonic language show his rapid growth.”
Cohen notes that playing jazz is “about conveying the most deeply human and personal; it’s essentially about connections,” both between the musicians and between the people on stage and the audience. Cohen inspires student performers of all ages to be, like himself, responsive to their audiences. He rose to fame at the Newport Jazz Festival.
He has played in legendary nightclubs such as the Village Vanguard, Blue Note, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Birdland, Jazz Standard, Ronnie Scott’s and Jazzhus Montmartre. He plays the Hammond B-3 organ at Harlem’s SMOKE jazz club. Emmet Cohen sat down at the piano at the tender age of 3.
Now 34, he has accompanied Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Jimmy Cobb, George Coleman, Jimmy Heath, Kurt Elling and many others. Emmet Cohen is the 2019 recipient of the Cole Porter Award, given by the American Pianists Association. In 2014 he was first in the American Jazz Pianists Competition, and in 2011 he won the University of West Florida’s Phillips Piano Competition and was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition.