I‘m in Crinoline
AM2006 NuNoise, Amymusic

“Bang up to date edge” - Stuart Maconie, BBC Radio 6, Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone

Co-Produced with Joe Mardin (NuNoise) with photos by renowned music photographer Merri Cyr, design by D’steam, engineering by Kenji Shimoda, Rod Hui, Tom Durack, Jon Rosenberg and Tom Gavin, and with an incredible lineup of New York musicians, I’m in Crinoline is 13 complex and extraordinary songs “not like much else you've ever heard.” - Three Weeks, Scotland. This “fascinating” gem was released to a packed house at Joe’s Pub and has been enjoying radio success from WNYC to BBC’s Radio 3 and 6 ever since. The album features Amy’s “somewhat twisted” arrangements for harmony, flute, clarinets, saxophones, trumpet, guitar, banjo, upright bass and drums, a wind septet & an accordion quartet (“The well thought out arrangements remind me of Van Dyke Parks on his debut, 'Song Cycle'” - Pitchfork Media Feature) with songs about melting ice-sculptures, epoxied roses, seas of calligraphy..."I dig that Amy's lyrics are quite poetic, saying a great deal with so few words, just a couple of pearls to consider" - Downtown Music Gallery. WNYC's David Garland describes it as "Boiling over with life. Instruments that you don't usually hear together playing melodies that aren't quite like anyone else's. You just dive in and enjoy." 

The Glass Laughs Back
AM1999 Amymusic

"Well-trained, self-inspired talent for the odd, up and down and all around, and out there." - The Village Voice.

A stark debut, recorded on a 1904 upright and accompanied by harmony saxophone, cello, and water-bottles, crashes together 20th/21st century atonality, pop and jazz. The liner notes, written by Pianist Michael Jefry Stevens read "Listening to the music of Amy Kohn is like entering a very private universe of sound - something very intimate, special and beautiful. Her music makes uncommon demands on the listener moving between several parallel musical worlds (20th Century Classical - the Broadway Musical - modern jazz and of course the perennial singer/songwriter performing her own music). One can hear the influences of Charles Ives, Erik Satie, Carla Bley, George Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Laura Nyro and especially Kate Bush. These are quite eccentric influences yet somehow Amy is able to create from such a disparate palate her own exquisitely molded individual voice (as a pianist, singer and lyricist/songwriter). This is real music."
 

All My Friends Are Here

Amy Kohn, whom Mardin dubbed “musical devil in a red dress,” lives up to her soubriquet with a brilliantly murky one-woman play set to the tune of “Dual Blues,” complete with femmes fatale and vice cops. - Jazztimes

Amy is honored to be a featured singer along with her friend Raul Midon, Chaka Khan, Norah Jones, Carly Simon, Diane Reeves, Dr. John and beyond on All My Friends Are Here, the final recording produced by the multi-Grammy winner who was responsible for well over 50 million-selling recordings throughout the world, and who is credited with creating sonic imprints for countless superstars including Bette Midler, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, The Bee Gees, The Young Rascals, Hall & Oates, Dusty Springfield, Norah Jones, Willie Nelson and Carly Simon to name just a few. Amy sings and plays accordion on Arif’s Dual Blues, a Film Noir torch song “with the feel of a smoke filled bar and requisite piano and tuxedoed pianist” (Skope).

“"The Greatest Ears in Town," the companion documentary, is the visual testament to Arif Mardin. Under the careful eye of Joe Mardin, the film follows Mardin's recording of "All My Friends Are Here," while also telling his life story. Interviews with Aretha Franklin, Sir George Martin, Quincy Jones, Phil Collins, Barry & Robin Gibb, among others, as well as historical footage of recording sessions provide a rare and insightful look not only at the creative genius behind the songs but also the very special husband, father and gentlemen he was. As Ahmet Ertegun, the late, legendary founder of Atlantic Records comments in the documentary, "Arif developed a sense of artist loyalty and friendship that few producers I know have ever done, because of his natural nobility. He was one of the greatest producers of the 20th Century."” (Marketwire)
 

1. "The Greatest Ears In Town" - Bette Midler featuring Barry Gibb
(Written by Bette Midler & Marc Shaiman)
2. "So Blue" - Chaka Khan featuring David Sanborn
3. "No Way Out" - Nicki Parrot
4. "Goodbye to Rio" - Raul Midon
5. "No One" - Dianne Reeves
6. "So Many Nights" - Danny O'Keefe
7. "Calls A Soft Voice" - Carly Simon
8. "Longing For You" - Norah Jones (also featuring Joe Lovano & John
Faddis)
9. "Dual Blues" - Amy Kohn
10. "Chez Twang's" - Dr. John
11. "Lonestar Blues" - Willie Nelson featuring Katreese Barnes
(Also featuring Doug Sahm on electric guitar and Arif on piano)
12. "All My Friend Are Here" - Featuring Hall & Oates, Barry & Robin Gibb,
members of the Rascals and the Average White Band, Phil Collins, Lalah
Hathaway, Cissy Houston and more; solo by Randy Brecker
13. "Wistful" - Arif Mardin, piano 

The Bushwick Book Club Vol. 1

"The Bushwick Book Club meets once a month at Goodbye Blue Monday in Brooklyn, NY. There, the delirious talents of local songwriters are employed to plumb the depths and scrape the ends of a chosen literary gem to create that rare and beautiful thing—a new song. All songs are then displayed, spread wide, in one hour. It’s an hour-long orgy of book-related songs and book-inspired food and drink and if that doesn’t sound indulgent enough, we don’t want to know you, you sick, sick bastard."

Amy contributes Facing Their Way, a song mixing Roald Dahl as a child lying in his dormitory bed missing his parents (from "Boy") with James (and the Giant Peach) missing his parents who were eaten up by a rhinoceros. 

MORE INFO

JANUARY
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

FEBRUARY
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

MARCH
Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott

APRIL
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
23. Facing Their Way by Amy Kohn

MAY
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

JUNE
Watchmen by Alan Moore

JULY
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

AUGUST
The Bible

SEPTEMBER
Short Stories by Members of the Bushwick Book Club

OCTOBER
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

NOVEMBER
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

I'll Take Jake

Written by Amy Kohn on the day Jacob Lutsky was born. Recorded and mixed by Tom Durack. Illustrations by Jill Auckenthaler