Reaching for the Heavens: The Music of Composer Gerald Cohen
Online: $10 | In person: $20 ($10 JTS student/faculty/staff)
- Alexandra Joan, piano
- Ilana Davidson, soprano
- Heather Johnson, mezzo-soprano
- Narek Arutyunian, clarinet
- Haim Avitsur, trombone
Gerald Cohen — Amid the Alien Corn (world premiere)
Gerald Cohen — Preludes and Debka
Gerald Cohen — Voyagers (Composed for the Cassatt String Quartet)
The highly regarded Cassatt String Quartet will perform in an in-person and online concert, Reaching for the Heavens: The Music of Composer Gerald Cohen, in the new auditorium at the Jewish Theological Seminary. This concert, sponsored by the H. L. Miller Cantorial School, is part of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS)'s opening season.
Having collaborated many years with the composer Gerald Cohen, the Cassatts will perform Preludes and Debka as well as a work written specifically for the ensemble, entitled Voyagers. The concert will also feature Ilana Davidson, soprano; Heather Johnson, mezzo-soprano; Alexandra Joan, piano; Narek Arutyunian, clarinet; and Haim Avitsur, trombone.
COVID-19 Protocols:
- All attendees must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
- You will receive a link to submit your proof of vaccination in your confirmation email after you register.
- Proof of vaccination should be submitted immediately after you register to ensure that you will be allowed entry into the building. (Current JTS students, faculty, and staff do not need to re-submit proof of vaccination.)
- Masks are required indoors.
About the artists:
Acclaimed as one of America’s outstanding ensembles, the New York City-based Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout the world, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York; Tanglewood Music Theater; the Kennedy Center, Washington, DC; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris; Centro National de las Artes, Mexico City; Maeda Hall, Tokyo; and Beijing Central Conservatory. At the Library of Congress, the Cassatt performed on the library’s matched quartet of Stradivarius instruments.
Esteemed music critic Alex Ross named The Cassatt three times to his “10 Best Classical Recordings” in The New Yorker, and the ensemble has been featured on NPR’s “Performance Today,” Boston’s WGBH, New York’s WQXR and WNYC, on Canada’s CBC Radio, and on Radio France.
The Cassatt’s numerous awards are from the National Endowment for the Arts, the USArtists International, Chamber Music America, CMA/ASCAP, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Meet the Composer, and the Amphion, Copland, Fromm and Alice M. Ditson Music Foundations. Since 1995, the ensemble has been on the performing artist roster for the New York State Council on the Arts.
With a deep commitment to nurturing young musicians, the Cassatt has offered classes for composers and performers at the American Academy, Rome; the Toho School, Tokyo; Bowdoin International Music Festival; Columbia; Cornell; Princeton; Syracuse Universities, and the University of Pennsylvania. The quartet is in residence annually at Maine's Seal Bay Festival of American Contemporary Chamber Music and Cassatt in the Basin! in Texas.
Equally adept at classical masterpieces and contemporary music, the Cassatt has collaborated with members of the Tokyo, Cleveland, and Vermeer Quartets, pianists Ursula Oppens and Marc-Andre Hamelin, clarinetist David Shifrin, flutist Ransom Wilson, jazz pianist Fred Hersch, didgeriedoo player Simon 7, the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and composers Louis Andriessen, Kaija Saariaho, Joan Tower, and John Corigliano. The Cassatt’s discography includes new quartets by Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Stucky; Guggenheim fellow Daniel S. Godfrey; and Grawemeyer and Rome Prize winner Sebastian Currier.
Named for the celebrated impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, the quartet consists of Muneko Otani, violin; Jennifer Leshnower, violin; Rosemary Nelis, viola; and Gwen Krosnick, cello.
Gerald Cohen is an assistant professor at the H. L. Miller Cantorial School of JTS, on the faculty of Hebrew Union College, and has been cantor at Shaarei Tikvah (Scarsdale, New York) for 35 years. As a composer, he has been praised for his "linguistic fluidity and melodic gift," creating music that "reveals a very personal modernism that . . . offers great emotional rewards" (Gramophone Magazine).
His opera, Steal a Pencil for Me, based on a true concentration camp love story, had its world premiere production by Opera Colorado in January 2018; excerpts were featured at Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers Festival in 2016.
Cohen’s earlier opera Sarah and Hagar, based on the story from the book of Genesis, has been performed in concert form. Cohen is a noted synagogue cantor and baritone; his experience as a singer informs his dramatic, lyrical compositions. Cohen’s best-known work, his "shimmering setting" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) of Psalm 23, has received thousands of performances from synagogues and churches to Carnegie Hall and the Vatican. Among his recent chamber music works are Playing for our Lives and Voyagers; these compositions, composed for the Cassatt String Quartet, will be the centerpieces of an album of Cohen’s music to be released on Innova Recordings in 2022.
Recognition of Cohen’s body of work includes commissioning grants from Meet the Composer, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, American Composers Forum, residencies including those at Copland House, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and American Lyric Theater, as well as Cantors Assembly’s Max Wohlberg Award for distinguished achievement in the field of Jewish composition, and the Hallel V'Zimrah Award from the Zamir Choral Foundation. Cohen received a BA in music from Yale and a DMA in music composition from Columbia. His compositions have been published by Oxford University Press, G. Schirmer / AMP and Transcontinental Music.
For further information, please contact Hemsing Associates at (212) 772-1132 or visit www.hemsingpr.com.
About Cassatt String Quartet
Hailed for its “mighty rapport and relentless commitment,” the New York City-based Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout the world for nearly four decades, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall; Tanglewood Music Center; the Kennedy Center; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Centro National de las Artes; Maeda Hall; and Beijing’s Central Conservatory. The Quartet’s prolific discography – featured three times in Alex Ross’s “10 Best Classical Recordings” column in The New Yorker – includes over forty recordings, for the Koch, Naxos, New World, Point, CRI, Tzadik, and Albany labels.
The Cassatt Quartet’s 2023-2024 season includes major performances and recordings of works by Tania León, Victoria Bond, Adolphus Hailstork, Chen Yi, Joan Tower, Zhou Long, and Daniel S. Godfrey; their annual residencies at the Seal Bay Festival and Cassatt in the Basin!; hometown concerts in the New York area, including at Symphony Space and Bargemusic; and appearances at Treetops Chamber Music Society, Maverick Concerts, and Music Mountain.
The CSQ is named for the great Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.
https://www.cassattquartet.com/About Ilana Davidson, soprano
About Heather Johnson, mezzo-soprano
About Haim Avitsur, trombone
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