Emmet Cohen: Universal Truth

There is an old-world saying that some folks are just born with an old soul. Pianist and social media conqueror Emmet Cohen—his pandemic- founded livestream, Live From Emmet's Place, has been viewed by millions across the globe—proves, positively, that the old wisdom still stands and forever will. For within the heart and soul of every jazzman and jazzwoman, the warm essence of the music's ever-painful, resilient, triumphal past resides.

A compatriot who does not mind growing up alongside the elders, Cohen continues his sprint into the future alongside the ever-present past on Universal Truth. In league with many of his previously insightful journeys on the way-back machine: Masters Legacy Series Volume 1: Jimmy Cobb (Cellar Live, 2017),  Masters Legacy Series Volume 2: Ron Carter (Cellar Live, 2018), his striding, 2021 Mack Avenue debut, Future Stride, and now Universal Truth, a vivid representation of his triumphant live celebration of Miles & Coltrane at 100 celebration paying homage to the centennial birthdays of Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

The award-wining 2025 Pianist of the Year reaches all the way back to Birth of the Cool (Capitol Jazz, 1957) and launches Universal Truth with the Davis/ Bud Powell tune "Budo." The joyride starts from there. With a crack-snap start from drummer Joe Farnsworth, Cohen and uber-bassist Yasushi Nakamura, call to mind many a popping and bopping trio of old. Moving chromatically at a breakneck pace, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt does Davis and his whole generation proud on Thelonious Monk's choppy classic "Well You Needn't," while the standing stone of jazz bassists, the irrepressible Ron Carter whips up a storm that lifts Cohen and Farnsworth to whip smart heights.

Tenor wise man George Coleman (a featured collaborator on the sprightly Masters Legacy Series Volume 4: George Coleman (Self Produced, 2019)) brings the quiet fire to "My Funny Valentine." Cohen is masterful here, with a contemporary punch and romance-flush reminiscent of Red Garland with Davis and Coltrane in 1956. Jimmy Heath's rubbery classic "Gingerbread Boy" features Carter bowing and bending between Pelt and a swing crazy Farnsworth, as Cohen breaks out a cool, breezy-as-you- please solo. The man is natural at these things and shines brighter than ever throughout.

His original centerpiece suite is nothing to sneeze at either. "Eternal Glimpse," with all lessons learned and accounted for, leads Cohen, Nakamura, Farnsworth, and guests in a blue ride down Broadway with "Compassion." Hot-house tenor saxophonist Tivon Pennicott laments, Pelt walks beside him, and the noir is set for the title track, a pick-your-elder tribute to that big band in the sky, and the universal truth is that we learn the truth from those before. And then use those lessons well.