Album Notes

"Fred Kohn plays with a lovely, warm singing tone, and his pieces have a gentle serenity that cannot fail to bring much comfort and relaxation to his listeners. This is a rare quality in the music that is being written these days." -Edmond Mignon, former pianist with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra

"I wrote the music for Peaceful Home over a period of about half a year when I was undergoing a crisis of faith and reevaluating the things that I thought gave my life meaning. During this time a theme that came up over and over again was family. Thus many of the tracks have titles based on my family: I was born and grew up in Tennessee, Harold is my father's name, Nancy is my wife, Chad is my son, and Molly and Kalayo are are the family dogs. The titles of the other pieces reflect spiritual themes. 'The Donkey' was inspired by the poem of the same name by G. K. Chesterton. 'On The Willows' reflects my exodus from church music, being based on Psalm 137:2- 'We put away our lyres, hanging them on the branches of the willow trees.'

The title for 'Peaceful Home' came about in an interesting way. That particular piece is one of the simplest that I had written harmonically and rhythmically, and there wasn't much in it that was inspiring a title for me. So I asked my wife what she thought it would be named. She gave me two possibilities, one of which was 'Peaceful Home'. I immediately settled on that as the name. After I made that decision Nancy told me that she thought all along that is what it should be named. She only gave me two options because she didn't want to presume to name my piece for me." -Fred Kohn

Fred Kohn has worked as a pianist in a Columbus Ohio restaurant for over 7 years. While comfortable in that role, Fred's real joy is to create solo piano compositions which reflect his various moods. Naturally his experience playing background music is a heavy influence in his original compositions, but his original music breaks the stereotypical "cocktail pianist" mold in surprising and exciting ways. Peppered with tasty harmonies and rhythms, Kohn's music will remind you of the Jazz and Classical roots of New Age music- while always remaining meditative and soothing.