Emmet Cohen Trio: A Spectacular Jazz Story

A piece by the Emmet Cohen Trio might begin with a stride rhythm from the 1920s, shift into bebop, and soon after settle into free improvisation. Yet it never sounds like a showcase of different jazz styles. Emmet Cohen and his friends Joey Ranieri and Joe Farnsworth take the history of this music as their starting point and decide on stage where it will lead them that evening.

Cohen was born in Miami in 1990 and was already sitting at the piano at the age of three. He studied at the University of Miami and later at the Manhattan School of Music. In 2019, he won the American Pianists Awards, and in 2025, readers of *DownBeat* magazine voted him Pianist of the Year. Yet his technique is rarely the sole focus of his playing. What matters most is what happens between the musicians.

This interest in musical exchange runs through all of Cohen’s work. For his “Masters Legacy Series,” he performed with greats such as drummer Jimmy Cobb, bassist Ron Carter, and saxophonists Benny Golson and George Coleman. For him, it was about more than just making recordings together. He wanted to capture how jazz is passed down from one generation to the next: through conversations, through playing together, and through things you won’t find in any textbook.