Amy Kohn

Dubbed a “Musical Devil in a Red Dress” by Legendary Producer Arif Mardin, Amy Kohn’s new CD I’m in Crinoline has been receiving substantial on-air attention: BBC Radio 3’s “Mixing It,” WNYC’s “Spinning on Air,” Kyle Gann’s Postclassic Radio, the Netherlands’ Concertzender, & stations in Germany, Macedonia, and throughout the US. Songs from the album were presented, recorded & in-studio on WNYC as part of a 2-hour program on Amy’s music, which included her music-theater work 1 Plum Sq., recorded & broadcast for their American Music Festival. This Chicago-born pianist with a voice as “idiosyncratic as they come...which is all part of the fun” (Pitchfork Media Feature) gives us songs that are “not like much else you've ever heard” (- Three Weeks, Scotland).
The album, Co-Produced with Joe Mardin (NuNoise Records), features 13 songs composed, arranged & performed by Amy, leading her 7-piece band, a wind septet & an accordion quartet to melting ice-sculptures, epoxied roses, and seas of calligraphy. “I dig that Amy's lyrics are quite poetic, saying a great deal with so few words, just a couple of pearls to consider” says Bruce Lee Gallanter of Downtown Music Gallery. “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.” The album features photos by Merri Cyr & Design by D’steam. Sweden’s Collected Sounds raves "I can't remember when I last heard something this special” & WNYC’s David Garland describes it as “Boiling over with life...Instruments that you don’t usually hear together playing melodies that aren’t quite like anyone else’s. You just dive in & enjoy.”
Amy’s first CD, The Glass Laughs Back is a starker debut, recorded on a 1904 upright, accompanied by harmony saxophone, cello, & water-bottles. The liner notes, written by Pianist Michael Jefry Stevens read “Listening to the music of Amy Kohn is like entering a very private universe of sound - something very intimate, special and beautiful…Her music makes uncommon demands on the listener moving between several parallel musical worlds (20th Century Classical - the Broadway Musical - modern jazz and of course the perennial singer/songwriter performing her own music). 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.”
Living in a pink-painted Brooklyn apartment, but now with her Chicago-made Conover baby grand, Amy can be found playing her local avant-garde club (Barbes) & venues all over NYC (Joe’s Pub, Mo Pitkins..), dancing around her place to Antonio Carlos Jobim like she used to around her childhood dining-room table, primping up for her house band stint with the wild Weimar New York cabaret, using her training in composition from Oberlin & NYU as a springboard to inspire neighborhood kids to write their own quirky songs, and gallivanting around Europe on tour, strapped to her motorcycle-tough accordion. Amy just got back from playing on a golden stage at the famed Klinker Club in London, & on a shiny Yamaha in a starry villa to peacocks & Italians, all of whom fell in love with Amy's joyfulness & sounds (UBI JAZZ FESTIVAL, Mira ITALY, w co-star Debora Petrina). She & Debora also soared a fence after their dramatic show in the FESTIVAL SEGNALI ALL'ORIZZONTE, Padova, ITALY).
In 2005, Amy garnered great reviews of her solo shows at the famed Spiegeltent & Acoustic Music Centre at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, & caused a stir at London’s The 12 Bar & Ray’s Jazz Shop: “Kohn is the kind of individual talent that the fringe is in danger of suffocating...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. Amy was recently honored to record with the beautiful late Producer Arif Mardin as a Featured Singer on a forthcoming album of his original music, along with Chaka Khan, Bette Midler, Norah Jones, Raul Midon & others. In April, Amy was a featured artist in the Tribeca New Music Festival in duo with her guitarist Tom Gavin, & is now making up songs arranging lustrously for her next album: 'Plexilusso' (w bursting songs Everyone's in Love, Flight Simulator, Heartache is an Orange, Ellipsis, L.E.D...), & working on a commission from New York's adventurous string quartet ETHEL. Her new piece: 'Snow to Cement' for Mary Rowell (violin) and Geoffrey Burleson (piano) premiered this Spring in the Women's Work 2007 Concert Series at the Greenwich House Music School, and was played again in Mary and Geoffrey's concert: Monsters on the Loose, Tribeca New Music Festival. This past fall, 'SLIGHT': Amy's piece for female breakdancer, baroque harp and drums premiered in the Music with a View Series at The Flea Theater, curated by Pianist Kathleen Supove, and her piece CORSET, commissioned by Guy Livingston for his 60 Seconds Project, just premiered in Paris. 'It’s great to be entertained by someone who is clearly so in love with music and sharing it with you.' (Three Weeks, Scotland)
Come see Amy with her full band at Issue Project Room December 22.
'Well-trained, self-inspired talent for the odd, up and down and all-around, and out there'
- Voice Choices, The Village Voice
NEW ALBUM: I'M IN CRINOLINE BUY NOW
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