Steve Kuhn

Pianist Steve Kuhn is renowned for his lyrical touch and sophisticated sense of swing. Kuhn’s 2012 ECM album, Wisteria, features the pianist playing alongside two longtime partners: electric bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Joey Baron. Although Kuhn has collaborated with Swallow for more than 50 years and with Baron for more than 20, the three never played as a trio together until the sessions for Wisteria. The album’s wistful title number, written by Art Farmer, references the early-’60s period when Kuhn and Swallow were in the trumpeter’s band together. The Brooklyn-born, Harvard-educated attended the famed Lenox School of Music alongside such fellow students as Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. While at Lenox, Kuhn met trumpeter Kenny Dorham, who drafted the pianist for a yearlong stint in his band. He left Dorham’s group in 1960 to join a new quartet being formed by John Coltrane –the 21-year-old Kuhn playing in the saxophonist’s band for a famous run at the old Jazz Gallery in New York. After a stint with Stan Getz, Kuhn formed his own trio with Swallow and drummer Pete LaRoca. In 1966, Kuhn recorded an album with vibraphonist-composer Gary McFarland, The October Suite, which featured McFarland’s chamber compositions with Kuhn as soloist. At the close of the ’60s, Kuhn lived in Sweden for several years, collaborating with bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen. After returning to the U.S., Kuhn began his relationship with ECM producer Manfred Eicher, recording the albums Trance and Ecstasy in 1974. In the late 1970s he formed a quartet with singer Sheila Jordan, featured on the albums Playground and Last Year’s Waltz. Kuhn and Jordan have continued to collaborate over the years. In 1996, Kuhn’s Remembering Tomorrow, re-examined some classic Kuhn tunes in a trio with David Finck and Joey Baron . Invoking ideas from The October Suite, the 2004 release Promises Kept saw Kuhn reinterpret highpoints from his songbook with a string orchestra; the result, according to All About Jazz, has “an air of romance and intrigue.” In 2009, Kuhn investigated another vaunted aspect of his past with the album Mostly Coltrane, teaming with Finck, Baron and saxophonist Joe Lovano.