Steve Kuhn (born March 24, 1938) is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and educator.

Kuhn was born in New York City, New York, to Carl and Stella Kuhn (née Kaufman), and was raised in Newton, Massachusetts. His parents were Hungarian-Jewish immigrants. At the age of five, he began studying piano under Boston piano teacher Margaret Chaloff, mother of jazz baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff, who taught him the “Russian style” of piano playing. At an early age he began improvising classical music. As a teenager, he appeared in jazz clubs in the Boston area with Chet Baker, Coleman Hawkins, Vic Dickenson, and Serge Chaloff.

After graduating from Harvard, he attended the Lenox School of Music where he was associated with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Gary McFarland. The school’s faculty included Bill Evans, George Russell, Gunther Schuller, and the members of the Modern Jazz Quartet. This allowed Kuhn to play, study, and create with some of the most forward-thinking innovators of jazz improvisation and composition; it culminated with his joining trumpeter Kenny Dorham‘s group for an extended time and (briefly) John Coltrane‘s quartet at New York’s Jazz Gallery club.