Name: Emily Kuhn
Occupation: Composer, improviser, trumpet player
Nationality: American
Current release: Emily Kuhn's sophomore album Ghosts of Us is out via BACE.
Recommendations: I loved the Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, and I have been obsessed with Cécile McLorin Salvant’s album Ghost Song ever since it came out!

If you enjoyed this Emily Kuhn interview and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official homepage. 



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

More than seeing something specific, I would say that I feel music in my body. Music that resonates with me makes me want to dance, or move, or just take a deep breath.

I tend to listen to live music with my eyes open and can go either way with recorded music.

What were your very first steps in music like - and how do you rate gains made through experience versus the naiveté of those first steps?

Music has always been a part of my life. I sang along to my brothers’ Suzuki piano songs before I talked. I played piano from a young age and used to make up my own songs all the time, without having any real knowledge of what I was doing.

I really started falling in love with music in middle school when I picked up the trumpet. I remember making so many connections so quickly - I loved learning about music theory and playing with a band for the first time! I was lucky that I had teachers who encouraged me to experiment and trust my own musical voice. I think that helped me develop my ear before I had even checked out any jazz or had any official music theory training.

Of course experience is so important too, and I can’t overstate how valuable my jazz education was, but I do think that my early experiences gave me a really powerful mindset towards how to interact with music that has stuck with me into my career.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music meant to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

When I was 13-16 I was deeply into my school band and just starting to get into jazz, playing in my school’s jazz band and taking jazz trumpet lessons. I was lucky to have a few amazing teachers, John D’earth and Greg Thomas, who introduced me to a lot of new music but also helped me develop and trust my own musical instincts.



Music was a huge part of my life - the band room was where I felt most comfortable being myself, and being a musician was a core part of my identity. I think that without this experience, I probably wouldn’t have gone on to become a professional jazz musician today. I was also into folk and old time music - I grew up contra dancing, and I became more interested in dancing and started listening to contra dance bands as a teenager.

Since then, I’ve significantly expanded my knowledge and experience. I listen to much more music today than I did then, and have a much deeper understanding of jazz than I did as a teenager, but the sense of music as a community builder that I developed at that age stuck with me.

One of my favorite things about being a freelance jazz musician has been the relationships that I’ve built through playing in bands in the Chicago jazz scene. I still believe that the best music comes from a strong sense of trust and community.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools and how have they shaped your perspective on music?

My voice is one of the tools I use the most in practicing and writing music. I do a lot of singing as part of my daily trumpet practice, and many of the songs I’ve written started out as me singing a melody and fleshing it out later. I think that feeling a strong connection between my voice and the trumpet has really shaped the way I play.

I also use a lot of piano, especially when I compose. I find it helpful to sit down at the piano and just record myself experimenting with chords and grooves without setting too many restrictions. Sometimes those recordings have turned directly into new songs!

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

I value humility, openness, simplicity, and trust as a musician and try to be present and play without preconceived notions of how the music is supposed to be whenever possible. I find writing music really helpful to process layered emotions and often am most motivated to write when I’m feeling overwhelmed by a feeling or experience.

A lot of my music is also inspired by my sense of place and experiences of the natural world. I am deeply inspired by my community; I think that being part of the Chicago jazz scene keeps me motivated and inspired more than anything else!

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

I agree with this! I don’t know that I have one particular sound that defines my music, but I enjoy playing with textures and orchestration.

I tend to be drawn to lush sounds - my first album, Sky Stories, features a string quartet and my newest album, Ghosts of Us, uses the interplay between piano and guitar to create a cinematic soundscape.



I think I also have a distinctive sense of lyricism and melody.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

I have had some really beautiful, meditative nights listening to frog sounds. There is something so peaceful about them, and it’s pretty wild that such a loud sound can come from something so small! I also love the sound of the wind over large bodies of water. I’ve spent a lot of time by the Lake Michigan lakefront and it always makes me feel grounded.

The natural world is full of musical noises, but I think that part of what makes music music is the element of human interaction, whether that’s just witnessing or actively participating in the soundscape and environment.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

I’m drawn to short and simple compositions. There’s something freeing about doing a lot with a little, and sometimes I find the simpler the melody, the more creative the playing has to be.

In Ghosts of Us, I intentionally tried to keep the melodies and forms simple, to allow the band space to grow organically through the compositions.

From symphonies and traditional verse/chorus-songs to linear techno tracks and free jazz, there are myriads ways to structure a piece of music. Which approaches work best for you – and why?

I use different approaches depending on the piece of music I’m writing, but one approach that I’ve recently found a lot of musical freedom in has been writing a short melody with fairly simple harmony, leaving room for the band to shape the music. One of my intentions for my latest album, Ghosts of Us, was to use this approach and allow the band the freedom to explore and play the music differently every time.

A good example is the song “In Lieu of Certainty, Movement” which has an 18-bar form with very cyclical harmony. Because the melody and harmony is so simple, a sense of anticipation builds up through the song and there is a lot of room for texture and dynamics to take center stage.



Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

In general, my writing process involves a few stages: getting into a flow state, writing with little to no restrictions or editing, sitting with the song for a while, then coming back and workshopping it, both alone and with collaborators.

I followed this creative process to write most of the songs on my new album, Ghosts of Us. I had written “When It Rains”, “When the World is Young”, and the beginnings of “Respire” before the pandemic, but wrote “Ghosts of Us”, “In Lieu of Certainty, Movement”, and “Home” entirely during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Those three songs in particular were inspired by intense emotions I was feeling around the pandemic. I was going on a lot of walks at the time, and I would start daydreaming melodies and harmonies while walking and meditating on my emotions. I would come home and play piano with no restrictions, still in the same meditative headspace, with a voice memo going. By the end, I usually had something resembling the final form of the song. I sat with the groove and chords that I ended up with for a week or two, making some tweaks along the way but not doing much major editing. At that point I wrote the songs out longhand, which is always how I write my first drafts of music.

I had a pandemic duo project with the bass player in my quintet, Kitt Lyles, so after the initial writing phase I shared my drafts with him and we continued editing collaboratively, fleshing out details in the songs and working up duo versions.

I started the quintet in 2021, and brought the songs into the band with a general idea of the direction I wanted them to go but few specific instructions. We tried some different grooves and concepts as a band until we finally settled on what felt right. The quintet is made up of some of my closest friends, and that sense of trust made it easy to experiment and collaboratively find the core of each song.

Sometimes, science and art converge in unexpected ways. Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

I don’t necessarily conduct experiments while playing, but I am definitely influenced by science fiction and the natural world!

I studied Environmental Studies in undergrad, and I became interested in the ways that writers, musicians, and artists reflect their experiences of their environments in their work. Many of my songs are directly or indirectly influenced by places I feel connected to, and my first album Sky Stories was strongly influenced by the poetry of Mary Oliver and the ephemeral environmental art movement.

In a similar vein, I wrote most of the music on Ghosts of Us in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. I had just read N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, and I was taken by the idea of multiple apocalypses - that the world can end multiple times, in multiple ways, but certain threads keep going through it all. This idea became a thematic throughline to the album.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

I try to have the same sense of flexibility and openness to possibility in my life that I have when I’m playing music. Improvising puts you in a particular type of flow state where it’s almost impossible to be closed off, and I think experiencing that can teach you what it feels like to be receptive.

Channelling that energy outside of music is easier said than done but it’s something that I strive for!

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I sometimes think about two sides to musicianship: craftsmanship and creative artistry.

In everyday practice, especially on an instrument as physically demanding as the trumpet, I mostly work on the craftsmanship side of things. That’s not so different from any other skill that you can practice and improve at over time.

But I do think the creative side expresses something completely different than those mundane tasks. I love coffee, but I would never make a cup of coffee to try to process grief or joy, or to build intentional community, or to try to provoke a response from someone.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

It’s hard to pick a specific song like this, but two albums that feel very cathartic to me are The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint by Ambrose Akinmusire and Ghost Song by Cécile McLorin Salvant.



If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I would like to see an inclusive, healthy music scene where musicians of all backgrounds are supported and valued! There are so many incredible artists out there who people don’t know about, because they don’t fit the stereotypical profile of a white, male musician.

People make their best work when they are in a supportive environment and music will only get better as more voices are heard and amplified.