Ryan Cohan Ensemble

The Ryan Cohan Ensemble is a ten-member group featuring two woodwind players (doubling on saxophones, flutes, clarinets), trumpet/flugelhorn, a string quartet, piano, bass and drums. The ensemble began performing and recording together as a sextet without strings when composer/bandleader Cohan released Here and Now (Sirocco Jazz UK) in 2001. The album received wide praise in the U.S. and Europe and introduced Cohan and his sextet to a broader audience.

Two albums of original music were subsequently released, One Sky (Motéma, 2007), Another Look (Motéma, 2010) and The River (Motéma, 2013), and the ensemble played many high-profile performances in Chicago and New York. Venues included Merkin Hall at The Kaufman Center, Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Iridium, The Hyde Park Jazz Festival, The Green Mill, Bernhard Theatre at Skidmore College, Northeastern University’s Fine Arts Center, Millennium Park, The Old Town School of Folk Music and The Chicago Cultural Center.

Cohan expanded the ensemble in 2016 by including a string quartet to premiere Originations – a multi-movement composition created with the support of a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Award. Originations marked an important new direction in Cohan’s work towards more expansive chamber music forms. 

Following the ensemble’s standout performance at The Chicago Jazz Festival to a crowd of 10,000, Cohan released a studio album of Originations in the summer of 2020. It received unanimous critical praise internationally including being a Downbeat magazine Editor’s Pick and appearing on the Chicago Tribune’s ‘Best Jazz Albums of 2020’ list. 

Conversant in many world music styles and rhythms, The Ryan Cohan Ensemble constantly seeks new musical territory for exploration while being rooted in the jazz and classical traditions. The highly empathetic way in which the players work together contributes to the group’s defining sound. It is a special connection shaped by the ensemble’s considerable performance history. 

More on Cohan:

Ryan Cohan’s expansive body of work ranges from solo piano pieces to arrangements for symphony orchestra and scores for independent films. A Chicago native, Cohan has worked with such jazz luminaries and elite large ensembles as Freddie Hubbard, Joe Locke, Kurt Elling, Andy Narell, Jon Faddis, Paquito D’Rivera, Gregory Porter, Victor Lewis, Bob Cranshaw, Jeff Hamilton, Steve Wilson, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, MusicNOW Ensemble, Orbert Davis’s Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, The Chicago Jazz Ensemble, The Grant Park Symphony Orchestra with Otis Clay and The Chicago Chamber Musicians among others. Both as a sideman and fronting his various ensembles, Cohan has performed at premier venues worldwide. He has collaborated extensively with Ramsey Lewis, contributing more than twenty compositions and arrangements to the late NEA Jazz Master’s recorded and live performance repertoire and penned the theme song for Lewis’s nationally syndicated television series, The Legends of Jazz. Cohan provided the orchestral writing for master vibraphonist Joe Locke’s live concert recording, Wish Upon A Star (Motéma) featuring Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra, and he was commissioned to arrange music for The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra led by Tommy Smith.

Cohan has embarked upon multiple international tours representing the U.S. Department of State in partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center. Leading his quartet, Cohan traveled across Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East performing and collaborating with local musicians with the mission of fostering empathy and connection between cultures through music.

Thus far in his career, Cohan has received the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in composition, Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Music and Sound Design Fellowship, Sundance Institute’s Interdisciplinary Grant, three New Jazz Works commissioning grants from Chamber Music America and The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, two Aaron Copland Recording Grants, the Composer Assistance Award from New Music USA and two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships.

As an educator, Cohan held the position of Artist-in-Residence at Guimarães Jazz (PORTUGAL), The University of Louisville School of Music’s Jamie Aebersold Jazz Studies Program and Purdue Univeristy and has been on the music faculty at the University Of Illinois at Chicago, The Skidmore Jazz Institute in New York and was 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.