Jazz musician glad to be offline and back in the saddle

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This article was published 15/06/2023 (1182 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Emmet Cohen’s last visit to Winnipeg proved to be an unforgettable experience.

The New York pianist’s two Asper Jazz Performances concerts on March 15, 2020, at the Berney Theatre were among the final notes played in front of a live audience in Winnipeg before the COVID-19 pandemic caused worldwide shutdowns.

“Winnipeg became part of our pandemic story,” says Cohen, who returns to the city Friday evening with his bandmates, bassist Russell Hall and drummer Kyle Poole, for a Winnipeg International Jazz Festival show at the Tom Hendry Warehouse theatre.

“It was kind of an eerie feeling,” Cohen remembers of the fateful gig in the city. “It was a very powerfully charged feeling, that we’re not going to take the music for granted, and I think everyone was playing a little more carefully and listening a little bit more carefully.

“It brought everybody together in that moment and everybody was able to forget about everything for a few minutes through music.”

New York was one of the cities hit hardest by the coronavirus during the early weeks of the pandemic, long before vaccines arrived. Hospitals were jammed with sick and dying people, first responders were overwhelmed and those who remained healthy were stuck in lockdowns, trying to stay safe.

Among those was Cohen, 33, who wondered what would be left of his growing career, which included taking first prize in the 2019 American Pianist Awards, the Cole Porter Fellowship in Jazz, a contract with Mack Avenue Records, one of jazz’s key labels, and a host of shows around the world that vanished one by one as the pandemic progressed.

“There was shock and sadness — this was cancelled, this was cancelled — until there was a release point where everything was cancelled,” he says. “That was a moment of clarity for me, when everything was gone and we got to start fresh and we didn’t have to worry about anything because everything was done. We started to build back from the ground up.”

His pandemic pivot proved to be a career turning point. He transformed his Harlem flat, shoving aside his dining-room table to make way for cameras and recording equipment to begin livestreaming on YouTube. Live From Emmet’s Place was born.

It’s a weekly YouTube jam session he began with Hall and Poole that has since welcomed some of the Big Apple’s top jazz musicians and singers, who join Cohen and his piano.

On Monday, Cohen posted its 108th episode, which features trumpeter Terrell Stafford and woodwind player Dick Oatts. The series has accumulated more than 1.6 million views on YouTube and Facebook in the past three years.

Cohen is keen to pay homage to jazz history; he says the concept behind Live From Emmet’s Place is similar to the way many musicians and families in Harlem would raise money to pay the landlord.

“(It’s like) the Harlem rent party, which was done in the Roaring ’20s, and (Emmet’s Place) was a big connection with the previous century,” Cohen says. “This time we’re doing this Harlem rent party, but we’re passing the hat virtually.”

When the pandemic eased, Cohen found time to get back to his recording career, starting with Future Stride, an album influenced by the stride piano style popularized by Jazz Age stars such as Fats Waller and Mary Lou Williams, and a 2022 followup, Uptown in Orbit.

The latter includes the intricate toe-tapper Finger Buster, in which Cohen’s piano sounds as if it’s emanating from a 78 r.p.m. gramophone record instead of a slick streaming service.

The removal of contemporary studio techniques instantly revealed how far recording has advanced.

“It became this cool idea where we were taking our modern recording and actually recording it back to a tape machine and printing it back to a modern recording,” Cohen says. “It was an interesting juxtaposition and sums up what we’re all about.”

A fifth volume of his Masters Legacy Series — which has included Cohen’s collaborations and interviews with jazz luminaries such as bassist Ron Carter and drummer Jimmy Cobb, both former bandmates of Miles Davis — is also in the works for later this year, this time with 88-year-old saxophonist Houston Person.

“I became aware of the jazz masters, the older generation, when I moved to New York and realized they were around and playing and willing to share what they knew and what they’ve contributed to the American art form,” Cohen says. “It brought this richness and depth; I wanted to see what I could do to bring my whole generation closer.

Friday’s concert will add another chapter to Cohen’s personal history.

The gulf between the uncertain times of spring 2020 and today will feel especially wide when Cohen arrives in the middle of the jazz festival, which creates a buzz of excitement in Winnipeg’s downtown.

“It’s been over three years, and human beings who love other human beings, who love to socialize, who love to be out and travelling, we aren’t taking those things for granted anymore,” Cohen says. “The silver lining is the message to be grateful for what we do have and to share these moments we have together.”

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall