He began studying piano at the age of five and studied under legendary Boston piano teacher Margaret Chaloff, mother of jazz baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff, who taught him the "Russian style" of piano. At an early age he began improvising classical music. As a teenager he appeared in jazz clubs in the Boston area, gigging with the likes of Coleman Hawkins, Vic Dickerson, Chet Baker, and Serge Chaloff. He graduated from Harvard and attended the Lenox School of Music where he was associated with such other future jazz masters as Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Gary McFarland, with a supportive faculty that included George Russell, Gunther Schuller, the Modern Jazz Quartet members, and Bill Evans. This allowed Mr Kuhn to play, study, and create with some of the most forward-thinking innovators of jazz improvisation and composition, culminating with his joining trumpeter Kenny Dorham's group for an extended time and then John Coltrane's quartet.