Steve Cohn

Steve Cohn: Iro Iro

by Jerry D'Souza
July 26, 2008

Steve Cohn has come a long way as a musician from the early days when he first learned to play the piano and played the blues in a club. He spent two years in Japan, which tells how he came by Japanese instruments like the shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute, and the hichiriki which is a double reed. Cohn also plays the ektara, a single stringed instrument used in India (the word literally means one string).

Steve Cohn: Iro Iro

by Nic Jones
July 7, 2008

Pianist Steve Cohn and his cohorts here avoid every cliché in the book in pursuit of music which even at the end of the program seems as elusive as it was at the beginning. This is no bad thing as it arguably sums up in essence the very nature of improvised music that seeks to avoid the obvious.

Such an assertion might smack of hyperbole, but the fact is that the music by turns documents the coming together of four ...