Kuhn Takes Comfort in the Old Standards : The jazz pianist changes emphasis in recent years, as he rediscovers some great, classic material

Jazz pianist Steve Kuhn, who performed with such giants as John Coltrane and Stan Getz by the time he was 25, had achieved notoriety long before those associations:

Say when he was around 2, in the early 1940s.

Kuhn has been told that before he could speak, he could identify in baby talk the names of such artists as Coleman Hawkins and Fletcher Henderson on the 78-r.p.m. jazz records his father played on the Victrola. More than that, he could also mimic the music, as well as crawl to the player and put the records on himself.

The way the New York City native knows, besides his parents’ telling him, is that his uncommon ability was documented by the renowned humorist and writer H. Allen Smith in his mid-1940s volume, “Low Man on a Totem Pole.”

“A press agent friend of my father’s brought Smith over to the house and he wrote me up as a child prodigy who had perfect pitch and a photographic memory,” said Kuhn, who appears unaccompanied tonight at the Room Upstairs at Le Cafe in Sherman Oaks.

“I really took to those records,” said Kuhn in an interview from a friend’s home near Hartford, Conn. He began classical piano studies at 5, yet invariably stuck some improvisation in his renditions of Bach and Mozart.

The effect of the music he heard in the first two decades of his life is revealing itself in Kuhn’s current repertoire. From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, the pianist led groups and played, he estimates, about 80% original material and 20% standards and jazz classics.

Now that ratio has been reversed.

“Maybe it’s a full cycle,” he said, looking for a reason for the about-face. “I had been playing originals, sometimes, perhaps, in a cerebral manner. Then in the mid-’80s, I started playing a lot of trio dates with (bassist) Ron Carter and (drummer) Al Foster, and we played mostly standards.

“Also during that latter period, I was accompanying (singer) Sheila Jordan and she likes standards and that may have had something to do with it. It just felt comfortable, and audiences were relating to what we were doing, so I saw no reason to change that.”

“I really enjoy playing those tunes and had been away from playing them for a long time. I’m rediscovering a lot of stuff, and still discovering other pieces,” said Kuhn, who has two new trio releases on the market: “Looking Back” (Concord Jazz) and “Oceans in the Sky” (Owl).

The latter album, which features bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Aldo Romano, is a fine example of Kuhn at work. He approaches such disparate yet refreshing material as Ivan Lins’ “The Island,” Kenny Dorham’s “Lotus Blossom” and Jule Styne’s “The Music That Makes Me Dance” with a graceful muscularity and an innate and telling lyricism that never cloys.

Kuhn has had many admirers over the years. The late great pianist Bill Evans, said of him in the mid-’70s: “Steve Kuhn continues to surprise. One thing is certain, and that is the man behind his music makes it always deserving of the closest and most respectful consideration from those who seek the truest rewards from the creative world.”

“Kuhn’s virtuosity, humor and audacious imagination combine to make him one of a kind,” said W. Royal Stokes, a jazz critic for the Washington Post.

Trio playing and solo work are two different worlds, Kuhn said.

“A trio is about a conversation between the three people,” he said. “It’s not about me accompanied by bass and drums. It’s three equal people having a dialogue.

“In a solo performance, you’re out there alone and you’re baring yourself. You’re responsible, in the most absolute sense, for what you’re doing. . . . It’s quite challenging, and I enjoy it.”

Kuhn’s initial interest in piano was intensified when, as a teen-ager in Boston, where his family had moved, he studied with Margaret Chaloff, a highly regarded professor and mother of famed jazz baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff.

“She was like a surrogate mother and guru in one,” said Kuhn, who now lives in Massapequa Park on Long Island. “She undid everything I learned before and gave me a technical approach where, dynamically and speed-wise, you can do whatever you want if you understand the principles.”

Shortly after obtaining a liberal arts degree from Harvard, Kuhn moved to New York where he worked with trumpeter Kenny Dorham, one of the great yet unheralded figures in jazz, and John Coltrane, among others.

“I never really played with anyone who could generate so much electricity,” he said of Coltrane.

One of Kuhn’s first trips to Los Angeles was in 1961, when, as a member of Stan Getz’s quartet, he played the Shrine Auditorium and the Renaissance Club, on the Sunset Strip. It was one of Getz’s finest ensembles, including drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Scott LaFaro.

Kuhn views his career philosophically. “It’s been peaks and valleys, very frustrating, very satisfying,” he said. “The consistency that I would like has not been there, but I think it’s coming. I get along with myself and with life’s tribulations fairly well. I feel very optimistic. My playing is as good as it’s ever been, and is getting better. I have experienced frustration, but I don’t dwell on it the way I used to. I look at it another way, seeing things as optimistically as I can and whatever I do reflects that. I’m happier.”