Emmet Cohen Trio and Houston Person

The Emmet Cohen Trio provided the instrumentals for the September 2018 Schwab Auditorium concert featuring vocalist Veronica Swift. This season pianist Cohen and his trio mates will be accompanied by Houston Person, a hard bop jazz saxophonist who, in his celebrated career, has recorded everything from disco and gospel to pop and rhythm and blues.

Cohen is the 2019 winner of the American Pianists Association’s highest award, the Cole Porter Fellowship, a competition that comes with a prize of $50,000 and a recording contract with Mack Avenue Records. He’s also the force behind the Masters Legacy Series, an ongoing set of recordings and interviews honoring legendary jazz musicians.

His albums include Dirty in Detroit (2018), Masters Legacy Series Volume 2 (2018) featuring Ron Carter, and Masters Legacy Series Volume 1 (2017) featuring Jimmy Cobb.

Person also played piano until he switched to tenor saxophone at age 17. After college, as a member of a U.S. Air Force band based in Germany, he played with jazz notables including pianist Cedar Walton.

The saxophonist established his reputation as a bandleader with a series of soulful recordings in the 1960s. For much of his career, though, he was best known for his partnership with jazz vocalist Etta Jones. Between 1975 and 2001, they recorded sixteen albums together.

Person has performed on almost seventy albums as a leader, including Chemistry (2016) and Remember Love (2018) with Carter, plus more than sixty as a sideman.