Jazz Conversations with Ashley Kahn

Ashley Kahnis a Grammy-winning American music historian, author, professor and producer. He teaches at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music, co-wrote Carlos Santana’s award-winning autobiography The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light (Little, Brown, 2014), and is a producer of Carlos (2023), the documentary on Carlos Santana (Imagine Documentaries/Sony Pictures Classics). He has written books on two legendary recordings: Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, and one on a legendary record label: The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records. His most recent book is George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters. He also edited Rolling Stone: The Seventies, a 70-essay overview of that pivotal decade.

Kahn, who was recently awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Jazz Journalists Association, broke into the music business as a tour manager and music festival producer, has held a variety of positions in radio, television, and online businesses. As a journalist, his byline has appeared in many publications and websites, including Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The New Statesman, and others, and his writing has garnered four ASCAP/Deems Taylor awards, and three Grammy nominations. In 2015, he was awarded a Grammy for his album notes to the John Coltrane release Offering: Live at Temple University, and in 2017, he received the Robert Palmer-Helen Oakley Dance Award for Excellence in Writing from the Jazz Journalists Association.

Kahn has worked on many music documentaries in a variety of roles: as producer/director — Carlos; Kind of Blue: Made in Heaven for Sony Music (2005) — as a consultant/writer — Netflix’s Chasing Trane (2016) and Stanley Nelson’s documentary on Miles Davis for PBS (2018) — and as on-screen interviewee in PBS’s Soundbreaking: Stories from the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music (2016); BBC’s 1959: The Year That Changed Jazz (2009); and many others.