Ryan Cohan Two Quartets

Saturday, September 27

TIME: 2:00pm-3:00pm

VENUE: hyde park union church. 5600 south woodlawn ave.

Ryan Cohan

Recognized for his “ingenuity and virtuosity” (Chicago Tribune), Ryan Cohan masterfully walks the line of writer and player, proving himself time and again to be a composer of rare vision as well as a highly versatile, powerfully expressive pianist. His expansive oeuvre ranges from solo piano pieces to works for symphony orchestra and scores for independent films. 

Cohan has produced six albums of original compositions, performed at premier venues across five continents, and been selected for honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition, Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Music and Sound Design Fellowship, four New Jazz Works commissioning grants from Chamber Music America and The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, New Music USA's Creator Fund Award, Sundance Institute's Interdisciplinary Grant, multiple Aaron Copland Recording Grants, a Composer Assistance Award from New Music USA, two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships, and the George Duke Commissioning Prize by the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra. 

A Chicago native, Cohan has worked with such jazz luminaries and elite large ensembles as Freddie Hubbard, Randy Brecker, Joe Locke, Kurt Elling, Andy Narell, Jon Faddis, Paquito D’Rivera, Gregory Porter, Jeff Hamilton, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Orbert Davis’s Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, and The Grant Park Symphony Orchestra with Otis Clay, among others. He also collaborated extensively with Ramsey Lewis, contributing more than twenty compositions and arrangements to the late NEA Jazz Master’s recorded and live performance repertoire.

As an educator, he has held the position of Artist-in-Residence at The Guimarães Jazz Festival in Portugal, The University of Louisville School of Music’s Jamie Aebersold Jazz Studies Program, and Purdue University; taught as a member of the music faculty at the University Of Illinois at Chicago and The Skidmore Jazz Institute in New York; and served as a teaching mentor for the Jazz Institute of Chicago. He has also worked extensively as an artist clinician at dozens of universities, high schools, and other notable music programs locally, throughout the U.S., and abroad.

The musicians:

Ryan Cohan - piano, compositions

John Wojciechowski – woodwinds

Lorin Cohen - acoustic bass

George Fludas – drums

KAIA String Quartet:

Victoria Moreira – violin

Naomi Culp – violin

Susan Bengston – viola

Hope Decelle - cello