I love your new work. It's a great place apart, a dream escape from what's just ordinary. You are everything but ho hum. - Van Dyke Parks.
Songwriter, Pianist and Accordionist Amy Kohn is applauded by some of the top composer/producers in modern song: Van Dyke Parks says she’s “Brimming with such talent!” and the late, legendary Producer Arif Mardin dubbed her a “Musical Devil in a Red Dress” and featured her as a Singer and Accordionist on his final recording, All My Friends Are Here, released this past June, along with performers such as Norah Jones, Chaka Khan, and Carly Simon. At “Her Black Iron Ship” (from Trust Aqua, a song written about Amy and her piano by Akiko Pavolka) Amy always seeks sounds she’s never heard, and it comes through in the “oddly structured beauty” (Scottish Herald) of her highly arranged, effervescent music.
I’m in Crinoline, Amy’s 2nd album, with songs about melting ice-sculptures, epoxied roses, and sweet cacophony, has been enjoying radio and print success from WNYC: “Boiling over with life” (David Garland, WNYC), to London’s Resonance and BBC Radio 3 and 6: “Bang up to date edge from someone who's music I'm very much enjoying in the moment...Terrific, Absolutely Terrific” (Stuart Maconie) to Pitchfork Media: “Great music...with a voice as idiosyncratic as they come” (Pitchfork Media Feature: The Month in: Out Music). Co-Produced with Arif Mardin’s son Joe, I’m in Crinoline was released to a packed house at New York’s famed Joe’s Pub with live performances of her arrangements for her 7-piece band, wind septet and accordion quartet.
An international touring artist, Amy has toured Europe 5 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, Geni Musicali, Croatia’s FoPa Festival of Performing Arts, Berlin’s Clavier-Cabinett, and London’s famed 12 Bar and Ray’s Jazz Shop. The past two summers, glowing Italian audiences returned Amy’s songs with a "tris" and her music was described as "appassionata, introspettiva, dissonante e armonica" (Il Mattino di Padova).
Amy’s compositions have been performed in many experimental festivals such as the 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 (piece for Breakdancer, baroque harp and drums). Her music-theater work 1 Plum Sq. was produced and broacast on WNYC as part of their American Music Festival and re-broadcast in a 2-hour special on Amy’s music. 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 premiered in Paris 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, was released in Spring on the Bushwick Book Club Vol I album. Her degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and the NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program ground her imaginings in compositional technique.
She’s working on her 3rd album, with songs about orange-shaped heartache, flight simulators, and Brazilian neon, which she started recording last summer with drummer Jimmy Weinstein in Udine, Italy. "It's great to be entertained by someone who is clearly so in love with music and sharing it with you" (Three Weeks, Scotland).
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)
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.