Emmet Cohen Pays Tribute to Two Jazz Greats

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: All Of It with Alison Stewart
Episode Title: Emmet Cohen Pays Tribute to Two Jazz Greats
Date: June 24, 2026

This episode centers on jazz pianist Emmet Cohen’s tribute to the centennial birthdays of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Featuring live studio performances and insightful conversation, Cohen reflects on honoring these legends while also forging his own musical path. He discusses his new album Universal Truth, which offers reinterpretations of classic jazz as well as original compositions inspired by the search for personal and artistic meaning. Cohen is joined by his trio and shares stories of collaborating with jazz luminaries Ron Carter and George Coleman, and comments on the impact of his popular "Live from Emmet's Place" streaming series.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introduction and Live Performance

[00:36]

• Alison Stewart introduces the episode’s core: celebrating 100 years since the births of Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
• Emmet Cohen performs "Buddo," a track from his new album Universal Truth—an adaptation of Bud Powell’s composition, famously reimagined by Miles Davis on Birth of the Cool.
• Notable quote (Buddo context):
  “So this is our little reduction and our take on this tune. Buddo.” —Emmet Cohen [01:50]

Exploring Miles Davis’s Influence

[07:28]

• Cohen discusses the legacy of Miles Davis as a collaborative composer, highlighting Davis's talent for reinterpreting others’ works and imprinting them with his unique style.
• Cohen notes the broader impact of Davis’s persona and leadership.
  • “He had, like, his imprint, just his whole aura and his vibe. And I think that's the most important takeaway when you're trying to honor him. ...the only thing you could do is turn inwards and try to be the best version of yourself.” —Emmet Cohen [07:40]
• He explains the jazz lineage is about transforming existing material while staying true to oneself and the moment.

Balancing Tradition and Innovation

[09:01]

• Discussing the challenge of honoring jazz icons while establishing one’s own voice:
  • “Earlier in your life, you want to do as much imitation as possible...Then you develop your own way of communicating... And that's really what—we try to do. It develops night after night when we're on tour, and then we try to be in the moment.” —Emmet Cohen [09:09]
• Emphasis on immersion, imitation, and evolving toward authenticity through collaboration and live interplay.

Comparing Miles Davis and John Coltrane

[09:55]

• Cohen reflects on the parallel yet divergent paths of Davis and Coltrane, noting:
  • Their origins in different regions and eventual convergence in New York that yielded era-defining collaborations (e.g., Kind of Blue).
  • Their solo paths: Miles Davis exploring crossover and electric genres; Coltrane’s evolving quest for spiritual and musical freedom.
  • “Coltrane...was more of a spiritual journey where he was just getting more and more free and trying to figure out the meaning of life. And he would often refer to what he was in search of as his universal truth.” —Emmet Cohen [10:08]
• Coltrane’s concept of “universal truth” is central to both his own evolution and Cohen’s recent work.

The Creation and Meaning Behind "Universal Truth"

[11:51]

• Cohen’s original suite, Universal Truth, is inspired by Coltrane’s metaphysical search.

  • “It's about that search. It's about us finding meaning in our lives ...and not being afraid to go after them...” —Emmet Cohen [11:55]

• Live performance: "Compassion," the second piece in the "Universal Truth" suite [12:26–20:23].

Collaborations with Jazz Legends

[20:23]

• On the album, Cohen brought together bassist Ron Carter and saxophonist George Coleman, both icons in the Miles Davis legacy, to play "My Funny Valentine"—a deliberate act of musical reverence and intergenerational continuity.
  • “To get them in the studio together…recreate ‘My Funny Valentine’ 60 years later…was something that we felt called to do and to make happen.” —Emmet Cohen [20:39]
• Cohen describes the emotional and historical depth when masters meet, passing their wisdom forward.
  • “There's just such a majesty and sorcery…there’s something baked into the history, baked into all the experiences...When they play a note and you can just cry…that’s the direction you want to head towards.” —Emmet Cohen [21:36]

The Viral Journey: "Live from Emmet’s Place"

[22:51]

• Stewart raises Cohen’s successful pandemic-era livestream series.
  • The first livestream (March 20, 2020) garnered 40,000 views—a reach Cohen notes would take years in traditional venues.
  • The series evolved into a "live Harlem rent party," adapting to logistical and residential challenges.
  • “We got kicked out of the apartment ultimately because the neighbors didn’t like the drums.” —Emmet Cohen [23:53]
  • Shows now take place at Power Station NYC; they've aired 142 episodes as of this recording.
  • The series has become a vital resource for jazz students and fans globally.
  • “There’s a real shift in the jazz zeitgeist, and it’s just cool to be a small part of that.” —Emmet Cohen [24:53]

Closing Performance & Reflections

[25:11]

• The episode concludes with Cohen performing the title track "Universal Truth" live.
• Cohen invites listeners to connect via upcoming shows and online platforms.
  • "Hope you'll continue to join us on our path to make the world a better place through this music and find our universal truths." —Emmet Cohen [25:11]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “To honor musicians like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, the only thing you could do is turn inwards and try to be the best version of yourself.” —Emmet Cohen [07:40]
• “Anything can happen. You can take the music in any direction. And it's all about that trust." —Emmet Cohen [09:09]
• “Coltrane…was more of a spiritual journey where he was just getting more and more free…and he would often refer to what he was in search of as his universal truth…And that always got me thinking about how as artists and human beings, we're constantly searching for our own universal truths. And they're changing and developing.” —Emmet Cohen [10:08]
• “When they play, they play a note and you can just cry, and you feel it. The hair on your arms and the back of your neck stands up, and you're like, wow. You can't put your finger on it always, but you know that that's—the direction you want to head towards.” —Emmet Cohen [21:36]
• "There's a real shift in the jazz zeitgeist, and it’s just cool to be a small part of that." —Emmet Cohen [24:53]
• “Hope you'll continue to join us on our path to make the world a better place through this music and find our universal truths.” —Emmet Cohen [25:11]

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Key Timestamps

• [00:36] Episode theme, intro to Emmet Cohen and centennial of Davis/Coltrane
• [01:50] Live performance: "Buddo"
• [07:40] Cohen on Miles Davis as a stylistic innovator and mentor
• [09:09] Balancing jazz tradition with personal artistic voice
• [10:08] Parallels and differences between Davis and Coltrane; the “universal truth” concept
• [12:26 - 20:23] Live performance: "Compassion" from Universal Truth suite
• [20:39] Story behind reuniting Ron Carter and George Coleman on the album
• [21:36] Cohen’s emotional response to recording with jazz greats
• [23:08] "Live from Emmet's Place" origin and viral reach
• [25:11] Final performance: "Universal Truth" (title track); closing remarks

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Summary

This episode of All Of It offers an intimate, wide-ranging reflection on legacy, interpretation, and the ongoing evolution of jazz. Emmet Cohen, deeply influenced by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, shares how honoring the past is intertwined with developing one’s own musical truth. With live performances, tales of legendary collaborations, and viral outreach in the digital age, Cohen exemplifies jazz as both tradition and innovation—passing the baton to the next generation while remaining rooted in the unending and deeply human search for meaning.

Transcript

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[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Coming up on the show tomorrow, Questlove will be here to talk about his new documentary about earth, wind and fire. Maggie o', Farrell, the author of Hamnet, joins us to discuss her new novel titled Land. And we'll talk about the Guggenheim's new exhibit exploring pop art. That's in the future. Now let's get things started with some live music. This year marks the centennial birthdays of two jazz giants, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Davis and Coltrane are beloved by fans around the world, including my next guest pianist, Emmett Cohen. Cohen has spent the last year on a tour celebrating Miles and Coltrane at 100. He recently just released a new album called Universal Truth which features his interpretations of the jazz compositions and his own original three part suite. The album is out now. You can see Emmett Cohen Trio performing at Smoke jazz club from July 8 to July 12. In the meantime, Emmett is here now in studio to perform live. Welcome back to the show.

[Emmett Cohen]

Hi Alison. So nice to be here. Thanks for having us in the studio.

[Alison Stewart]

You are kind enough to start us off with a performance. What are we gonna hear?

[Emmett Cohen]

This is the first track on the new record. It's called Buddo. It is by Bud Powell and adapted by Miles Davis on an album called Birth of the Cool. It has a larger ensemble with woodwinds and everything and we pared it down just for the trio. So this is our little reduction and our take on this tune. Buddo.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's hear it.

[Unidentified Vocal Interjections]

Sam. Sa. Sam, It's, it's. It.

[Commercial Voiceover 1]

Nice.

[Alison Stewart]

That was Emmett Cohen. He's here to perform live from his new album, Universal Truth. You can catch the EM and Cohen Trio performing at the Smoke jazz club from July 8th through July 12th. Before we go any further, will you introduce us to the rest of the group?

[Emmett Cohen]

Would love to. On the bass from just outside of Chicago, Illinois, that's Mr. Joey Raynery.

[Alison Stewart]

Hey, Joey.

[Emmett Cohen]

And on the drums, one of the legends of this music, he's from South Hadley, Massachusetts, but a New Yorker for 40 years, the great Joe Farnsworth.

[Alison Stewart]

It's nice to meet you as well. We just heard that piece. It was written by Miles Davis. What does that song represent to you about the way Miles Davis his role as a composer?

[Emmett Cohen]

Well, Miles, he was a collaborative composer, so he kind of took what Bud Powell did. A lot of times he would take other people's music and ideas and then put his own taste on them and stylized them. And that's what he was really about. Just the style, the way he dressed, the way he moved, the way he talked, the way he led his band. A lot of times he would have his band playing somewhere and he wouldn't show up, and it would only be the rest of the band there, but it would still sound like Miles Davis somehow. And he wouldn't even be there. So he had, like, his imprint, just his whole aura and his vibe. And I think that's the most important takeaway when you're trying to honor him. It's like you gotta style something your way. And when you honor musicians like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, the only thing you could do is turn inwards and try to be the best version of yourself. And that's what the greatest artists in the world taught us. So that's kind of how I approach thinking about that.

[Alison Stewart]

So Bud Powell was a pianist?

[Emmett Cohen]

Yes, Bud Powell is a pianist. And then. So that tune went from Bud Powell, great bebop pianist, kind of inventor of a lot of the language that we know and love. And then Miles took that tune and he turned it on its head. And so now we took that tune and we turned both of the versions on their head and did our own thing with it. And that's really what the lineage is about.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah, that's hard to think about. You know, you want to honor the legacy, but you want to put your own spin on things. How do you balance that?

[Emmett Cohen]

Well, I think earlier in your life, you want to do as much imitation as possible. It's like immersion. This is a language. If you want to learn any language, you got to put yourself right in the middle of it and absorb it. And then you develop your own way of communicating. And then you have your musicians that you play with a lot. And you got your own way. You got your own inside jokes and your own colloquial. Colloquial isms and way of talking and interacting. And you develop your own style and you put your. Put your own spin on it. And that's really what. What we try to do. And it develops night after night when we're on tour, and then we try to be in the moment. And that's really the goal is to be in the moment with the other musicians and be completely 100% present. Anything can happen. You can take the music in any direction. And it's all about that trust.

[Alison Stewart]

When you think back to Coltrane and Miles both having their hundredth anniversary of their births this year, when you think about them, how do they compare to one another? I mean, you shouldn't compare them, but how do they relate to one another?

[Emmett Cohen]

Well, it's really interesting. As musicians and historians, we track their artistic legacies and their journeys. And the places where they started were so unique. The places where they intersected, you know, the maybe like Kind of Blue, the greatest bestselling jazz album of all time. And the band that they had together was very transformative and kind of the bible for how to play jazz in a group setting. Everyone who came after that kind of studied that. And then they went on to do their own thing and start their own band and find their own sound. So when I think about their arc, they started in two completely different places. Miles Davis is from East St. Louis, John Colchain's from North Carolina, but spent early years in Philadelphia. They had their own thing. They met up in New York, intersected, changed music forever, and then went on to keep changing music in their own individual directions. And they couldn't have ended up in further places time wise. You know, John Coltrane was passed away in the 60s and Miles Davis made it all the way to 1990. So there's a lot longer of a trajectory. Miles Davis got it a lot more into electric music and crossover and tried to reach more people with the music. And John Coltrane, he kind of just looked upwards and looked to the heavens and it was more of a spiritual journey where he was just getting more and more free and trying to figure out the meaning of life. And he would often refer to. Refer to what he was in search of as his universal truth. And that always got me thinking about how as artists and human beings, we're constantly searching for our own universal truths. And they're changing and developing.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, it's a big part of the composition that you wrote for this album.

[Emmett Cohen]

Yeah, exactly. Universal truths, exactly. It's about that search. It's about us finding meaning in our lives and the things that matter to us and not being afraid to go after them and to follow our hearts.

[Alison Stewart]

I'm speaking with Emmett Cohen. You can catch it, the Emmett Cohen Trio performing at Smoke Jazz Club from July 8 through July 12, or you can listen to him now what are we gonna hear next?

[Emmett Cohen]

This next one is part of that suite, part of the Universal Truth suite, and it's the second piece in it. It's called Compassion.

[Unidentified Vocal Interjections]

Let's sam it. Sa.

[Alison Stewart]

That was beautiful. Compassion by Emmett Cohen from his new album Universal Truth. I have to ask about this. You had bassist Ron Carter and saxophonist George Coleman appear on your new record together.

[Emmett Cohen]

So if we're talking about a Miles Davis celebration, you know, we never want to call it a tribute because we're celebrating what they left us and. And trying to carry it forward. But in order to do that, I've realized you need to dig deeper into the past. And I was fortunate enough to have relationships with. I am fortunate enough to have relationships with Ron Carter and George Coleman. And they're not known for playing together in this time. They're really doing their own things. And to get them in the studio together to recreate my funny Valentine 60 years later from the famous Miles Davis album was something that we felt called to do and to make happen. And the energy in the room, the fact that they saw each other and said, I love you to each other and then played together just created beauty. It gives me perspective on what life's really supposed to be about.

[Alison Stewart]

I know you're professional and everything, but did you fan out?

[Emmett Cohen]

Yeah, I mean, I always fan out. When you're around Maestro Ron Carter, there's just this magic in the air and in the playing, and the same with George Coleman. There's just such a majesty and sorcery that, you know, you listen to them play something and then you try to do what they did, and you just can't do it like that. There's something baked into the history, baked into all the experiences, everything that they've lived, and all the hardships and all the triumphs and all the creation and trial and error and all of it, all the time around the greats and. And when they play, they play a note and you can just cry, and you feel it. The hair on your arms and the back of your neck stands up, and you're like, wow. You know, you can't put your finger on it always, but you know that that's. That's the direction you want to. You want to head towards. And there's just a thing that they have that teaches us, like, we all have this thing inside of us. And so that was important for us to experience in the studio. And then once you experience that, then you have a piece of that inside of you, and you can try to spread it forward and that's what passing the baton is about. That's what celebrating the master is about. And finding our place in the future of the music, too.

[Alison Stewart]

Now, I said to you it was really nice to meet you in person because I met you during COVID when you were doing your live from Emmett's place. People saw that you had a series that ultimately it went viral. When did you know that that series had gone viral?

[Emmett Cohen]

Well, we did the very first video. I think it was March 20, 2020. And we just played from the house, and I put on a suit and tie and I answered some questions, Q and A afterwards, and it was just on the iPhone. But that that video got 40, 000 views, that first one. And I was like, man, if we're playing at venues around New York City and other places, it would probably take us three years to reach that many people. So it was right off the bat I knew we were onto something. And then every single week and month, we upgraded the technology, started getting different guest artists, and it was a real live Harlem rent party 100 years later in the roaring 20s. And the mythology to me was. Was really important. It was in Harlem. And then we got kicked out of the apartment ultimately because the neighbors didn't like the drums.

[Commercial Voiceover 2]

I didn't know that.

[Emmett Cohen]

Yeah, so that's part of the story too. That happened around October. And in December, we started in our new series, or continuation of the series in its new at Power Station NYC on 53rd street in New York City. So we have this amazing partnership and we've last month put on a show and celebrated Universal Truth, the release of that album on Mack Avenue and had the whole band, Jeremy Pelt and Tavon Pennicott join us, playing, you know, the roles of Miles Davis and John Coltrane and honoring them. And we've had a bunch of other great shows. George Coleman was there celebrating his 91st birthday. And so we've done 142 of these shows as of this recording, and you can them all on YouTube. And so I didn't realize this, but they've also become a tremendous resource for younger musicians who are everywhere in the world, are watching this, watching us play or watching the great musicians play and wanting to study jazz and wanting to swing and play jazz standards. And so there's a real shift in the jazz zeitgeist. And it's just cool to be a small part of that.

[Alison Stewart]

My guest has been Emmett Cohen. He's here with his trio to perform live from his new album, Universal Truth. You can catch Emmett Cohen trio performing at Smoke Jazz Club from July 8 through July 12. What are you going to take us out on?

[Emmett Cohen]

This is Universal Truth, an original composition and the title track of our album. Hope everyone checks it out and you can also find us on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook and all that. We love to make new friends and we hope to see everyone at Smoke Jazz Club in just a couple weeks in July. And yeah, hope you'll you'll continue to join us on our on our path to make the world a better place through this music and find our universal truths.

[Unidentified Vocal Interjections]

Thanks so much Emmett. Sa. It's.

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