A Portrait of Jon Cowherd

That Jon Cowherd became a musician seems preordained. Known primarily for his long-term collaboration with drummer Brian Blade as co-founder and a primary composer of Blade’s Fellowship band, the Paducah, Kentucky native was born to a trombonist and band director father and a classically trained vocalist mother in a house full of music that ranged from classical to jazz to the Beatles. He showed musical promise early, beginning classical piano lessons at the age of five before expanding to trumpet and violin studies by ten at his parents’ urging.

He cites his father’s piano playing while composing and arranging for his high school band as early influences on his musical pursuits, and he entered Loyola initially as a French horn major. While there, he came under the tutelage of several notable teachers including guitarist Steve Masakowski, New Orleans drumming legend Johnny Vidacovich, and Ellis Marsalis, the New Orleans music icon and patriarch of jazz’s first family who mentored nearly every major Crescent City jazz musician of the last half-century, including future collaborator Brian Blade. Cowherd felt an innate kinship with Blade after meeting him in 1988, performing extensively together as a duo and beginning an enduring friendship and musical partnership. The pair, along with a fellow classmate, bassist Chris Thomas, formed the core rhythm section of the Fellowship band that has remained consistent. It was while at Loyola that Cowherd really heard live jazz in an immersive way, and with his teachers’ encouragement he decamped to New York in 1993 to begin his professional career.

Brian Blade, who arrived in New York the year before Cowherd, was actively working as a sideman with Kenny Garrett, Joshua Redman, and Mark Turner when he and Cowherd founded the Fellowship band in 1997 with Thomas, saxophonists Myron Walden and Melvin Butler, and guitarists Jeff Parker and Dave Easley. Their self-titled 1998 Blue Note debut was produced by Daniel Lanois and established the band’s singular approach, possessed of tightly meshed horn and string passages and flowing, ever-evolving cinematic tapestries of sound that evoke the natural world, folk, gospel, and the leader’s Southern upbringing. Cowherd contributed the composition “Lifeline” to the album, and on the follow-up, 2000’s Perceptual, composed four of the session’s nine tracks and co-produced the recording.

Eight years would pass until the band’s next album, during which time Blade became a member of jazz icon Wayne Shorter’s last and longest-lived ensemble. The 2008 Fellowship release, Season of Changes, was their sole output for Verve Records, containing Cowherd’s extended title composition and one of the band’s signature tunes in “Return of the Prodigal Son,” followed by 2014’s GRAMMY-nominated Landmarks and 2017’s Body and Shadow for Blue Note. Cowherd’s composition “Duality” was a featured part of the band’s performance at SFJAZZ in June 2016 during the 34th San Francisco Jazz Festival.

The band’s latest recording, 2023’s Kings Highway, is their most accomplished to date, released on Blade’s own Stoner Hill imprint and recorded at the now-closed Fantasy Studios in Berkeley while in the Bay Area for their SFJAZZ performance in June 2018 during the 36th San Francisco Jazz Festival. The album marked the return of guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel to the lineup for the first time since Perceptual in 2000.

Beyond his work with the Fellowship band, Cowherd has been an active sideman, working with John Scofield, Lizz Wright, Marcus Strickland, Iggy Pop, Rosanne Cash, and Cassandra Wilson, among others. He recorded his debut as a leader for the ArtistShare label, Mercy, in 2013 with a quartet including Blade and the drummer’s Wayne Shorter quartet bandmate, bassist John Patitucci, along with guitarist Bill Frisell.

The rhythm section of Cowherd, Blade, and Patitucci had toured the U.S. and Europe as a trio before the recording of Mercy and reconvened a decade later for the pianist’s newest album, 2023’s Pride and Joy, released on Le Coq Records. Named in honor of Cowherd’s young daughter Sofiane, the album also reflects the leader’s change in perspective after trading the hustle and bustle of New York City for the idyllic setting of Grand Junction, Colorado. This geographic change is depicted in the compositions “Grand Mesa,” featuring guest appearances by percussionist Alex Acuña and SFJAZZ Collective music director and saxophonist Chris Potter, and the angular trio vehicle “The Colorado Experiment.” Cowherd’s daughter is again referenced in the dynamic “Little Scorpio,” and his teacher Ellis Marsalis and his no-nonsense mentorship is the inspiration for “Honest Man.”

In addition to Cowherd’s own masterful compositions, Blade contributed “Quilt City Blues,” dedicated to Cowherd’s Paducah, Kentucky hometown – a hamlet self-described as “Quilt Capital of the World,” and Patitucci wrote the serpentine “Chickmonk,” a tribute to Thelonious Monk and the bassist’s former boss, the late genius Chick Corea.

The Jon Cowherd Trio with John Patitucci and Brian Blade perform 11/9 in a double bill with trumpeter Ingrid Jensen as part of Terence Blanchard’s UpSwing series. Tickets and more information are available here.