Sep 2, 2010: New site is coming, see you soon...
Amy KohnNEWS:
JUNE 15: Release of All My Friends Are Here, the final recording by legendary, multi-Grammy winning producer Arif Mardin. Chosen by Arif himself, Amy is honored to be a featured singer on this album of his original music along with Chaka Khan, Norah Jones, Raul Midon and others. Now available on iTunes!
Amy Kohn, whom Mardin dubbed "musical devil in a red dress," lives up to her soubriquet with a brilliantly murky one-woman play set to the tune of "Dual Blues," complete with femmes fatale and vice cops - Jazztimes
1977 Swimming Lessons played on Austrian Radio: CBA
APRIL 6: Release of Bushwick Book Club Vol I album, featuring Amy's Facing Their Way, a song combining Roald Dahl as a child lying in his dormitory bed missing his parents (from "Boy") with James (and the Giant Peach) missing his parents who were eaten up by a rhinoceros
PROJECTS:
Amy Kohn Band
Amy Piano Accordion Vox
Nikki Scheller Vox
Peter Hess Flute Clarinet Saxophone
Greg Glassman Trumpet
Tom Gavin Guitar Banjo
Ben Rubin Bass
Jeff Davis Drums
NientAltroKeDonne!
Amy Kohn and Debora Petrina Co-bill
Guests include Choreographer Nicoletta Cabassi (Senigallia 2009), and this summer brings London's Roshi Nasehi to Italy to add a third
Amy and Debora met in New York and there they played together for the first time, at the center of the avant-garde scene. Concerts followed at UBIJazz, Festival Segnali All'Orizzonte, WomaJazz, Sengallia's Notte Bianco, and also in clubs and independent radio. Both uncommon pianists, singers and songwriters, follower of neither style than theirs, not classical and not contemporary. But avant-garde and purely female: NientAltroKeDonne! is the unfolding of the acronym: Naked! ("Nothing Else Than Women!" in Italian) to explain their being alone in the scene, single-players and creators of the musical invention. Voice and piano for both, keyboards for Debora, accordion for Amy
Amy Kohn + Jimmy Weinstein Piano/Vox Drum Duo
Both originally from the Windy City, both migrators to New York, Amy and Jimmy met in Padova Italy (where Jimmy now lives) only last year, and played together like they knew each other a long time. Jimmy has recorded over 20 albums on labels which include Fresh Sound, Clean Feed, CIMP, Accurate, Spasch, GM, and Philology, and his experimental, turbulent yet discliplined style fits like a glove with Amy's whimsical songs.
Amy Kohn Solo
Seeing Amy Kohn solo is a chance to experience this otherworldly artist in her most deep way, without the shift of attention in leading her 7-piece band. Her “complex and extraordinary” songs are distilled to their essence, and it’s like watching her play at home, when she’s most private and at one with them. Energetic at the piano or attached to her glittering accordion, she sings from her two acclaimed albums: The Glass Laughs Back and I’m in Crinoline as well as songs from her upcoming, extra-lustrous one about orange-shaped heartache, flight simulators, and Brazilian neon. Solo concerts can include projections by Brooklyn painter Jill Auckenthaler. "It's great to be entertained by someone who is clearly so in love with music and sharing it with you" (Three Weeks, Scotland).
BIO
Dubbed a “Musical Devil in a Red Dress” by legendary Producer Arif Mardin and "as idiosyncratic as they come..which is all part of the fun" (Pitchfork Media Feature), Pianist, Accordionist and Singer Amy Kohn is known for her otherworldly music. Her 2006 album I’m in Crinoline, “a jazz-pop-composer's record fit for people who think Steve Reich should be writing showtunes” (Pitchfork Media Feature), was released to a packed house at New York’s Joe’s Pub with live performances from her 7-piece band, a wind septet and accordion quartet. The album, Co-Produced with Joe Mardin, has been enjoying radio success from WNYC to BBC’s Radio 3 and 6 (“Bang Up To Date Edge” - Stuart Maconie), BBC RadioWales, London’s Resonance, the Netherlands’ Concertzender, and beyond. The liner notes of her debut album The Glass Laughs Back read: “One can hear the influences of Charles Ives, Erik Satie, Carla Bley, George Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Laura Nyro and especially Kate Bush. These are quite eccentric influences yet somehow Amy is able to create from such a disparate palate her own exquisitely molded individual voice (as a pianist, singer and lyricist/songwriter). This is real music” (Pianist Michael Jefry Stevens). Her musical theater 1 Plum Sq. about an architect who becomes interested in fire was recorded and broadcast by WNYC as part of their 2005 American Music Festival, and excerpts from the show were re-broadcast on a 2-hour WNYC Special devoted to Amy’s music.
An international touring artist, Amy has toured Europe 4 times in the past 3 years, performing her music at festivals and venues such as Italy’s UBI Jazz, Woma Jazz, Senigallia’s Notte Bianca, Segnali all'Orizzonte, Geni Musicali, Croatia’s FoPa Festival of Performing Arts, and London’s famed 12 Bar and Ray’s Jazz Shop. Last August’s glowing audiences at Amy’s solo show at the Giardini Sospesi in Padova, Italy returned her with a “tris” and her music was described as “appassionata, introspettiva, dissonante e armonica” (Il Mattino di Padova).
This June brings the release of All My Friends Are Here, the final recording by legendary, multi-Grammy winning producer Arif Mardin. Chosen by Arif himself, Amy is honored to be a featured singer on this album of his original music along with Chaka Khan, Norah Jones, Raul Midon and others. Amy's compositions have been performed in New York’s Women's Work Concert Series, the Tribeca New Music Festival, and the Flea Theater's Music with a View Series curated by Pianist Kathleen Supove. The first movement of her piece Cereza, commissioned by New York's adventurous string quartet ETHEL, premiered at the Winter Garden in December 2007, and her 60-second piece Corset was released this fall on pianist Guy Livingston's DVD One Minute More, accompanied by a short video by Nelleke Koop filmed twelve feet below sea level on a moving piano. Her song, Facing Their Way, combining Roald Dahl as a child lying in his dormitory bed missing his parents (from "Boy") with James (and the Giant Peach) missing his parents who were eaten up by a rhinoceros, will be released April 6 on the Bushwick Book Club Vol I album.
Amy is now lustrously arranging her new album for her 7-piece band plus string quartet, musical saw, marimba, marbles, and more. She’s also creating an International Video Commissioning Project, working with animators and artists on videos for each of the album’s 11 songs.
Bang up to date edge from someone who's music I'm very much enjoying in the moment
Stuart Maconie, BBC Radio 6, Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone
Amy's songs are unique and not influenced by rock music, but from an earlier tradition, the netherworld between off-Broadway and other more modern songwriters that don't come from the folk world, but borrow from some more jazz influences... The well thought out arrangements remind me of Van Dyke Parks on his debut, 'Song Cycle'. Amy Kohn's new disc is one of those overlooked gems that most local hipsters might miss if they weren't so caught up in which trend looks cool this week
Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery Review
Situated somewhere between Thelonious Monk's quirkiness and Suzzy Roche's sweetness, her music possesses, at once, a childlike innocence and a harmonically and rhythmically advanced sense of inquiry. Oddly Structured Beauty
The Scottish Herald, Edinburgh Fringe Festival
Great music...it actually reminds me most of my personal heroes. Check this record
Dominique Leone, The Month In: Out Music, Pitchfork Media
Well-trained, self-inspired talent for the odd, up and down and all-around, and out there
Voice Choices, The Village Voice
I can’t remember when I last heard something this special
Anna Maria Stjarnell, Collected Sounds Sweden
Her compositions and arrangements are complex and extraordinary - with influences from classical to jazz and much in between, and when you add this to her soaring, impressionistic vocals and instantly recognizable voice, the resulting music is totally unique...You simply can't take your eyes off her
Sue Edwards, Jazzshark
Emotionally powerful and musically daring work
Broadway Online
Boiling over with life. Instruments that you don’t hear together playing melodies that aren’t quite like anyone else’s.
You just dive in and enjoy
David Garland, WNYC, Spinning on Air
email: amy@amymusic.com