Gerald Cohen (composer)

Music and style

Cohen's music reflects his embracing of both Western classical traditions and his Jewish roots. Ken Smith, writing for Gramaphone, says of Cohen's style:

Cohen composes with a strong sense of tradition -- one that embraces Brahms, Bartok and Britten on one hand and his own Jewish heritage on the other. Which side becomes more prominent depends, it seems, on how deeply any particular piece is rooted to text. A cantor himself, Cohen's songs and his Passover Cantata V'higad'ta L'vincha display a linguistic fluidity and a melodic gift that hints at what the Hebrew liturgy might be like today if Britten had changed faiths. Once away from the language, however, the Jewish roots recede into a broader modernist context. His String Quartet No. 2, likewise, uses traditional structures, namely sonata form in the outer movements encasing a slow and lyrical elegy to his late father. The composer's self-described synthesis of art, religion and family in this piece reveals a very personal modernism that makes for more difficult listening -- imagine Bartok spiked with Hebraic modal and metric shifts -- but offers greater emotional rewards as well.

Cohen cites both his experience as a cantor and the western classical tradition (Beethoven, Mahler, and Copland) as equal influences. In a 2002 interview for New Music Box, he said, "in a way what I'm trying to do is have that all come together, perhaps not completely consciously, but just that those are also different sides of me which I want to project into whatever I'm writing."

Cohen's best known work is a "shimmering setting" of Psalm 43.

He is the composer of three operatic works: the 2013 opera Steal a Pencil for Me, based on a true story of love in a WWII concentration camp, which Lucid culture described as "…mesmerizingly hypnotic, intricately contrapuntal" music, with moments of "…Bernard Herrmann-esque, shivery terror…". His opera Sarah and Hagar (2008), based on the story from the book of Genesis, and Seed (2011), a one-act opera about love and choices for a post-apocalyptic couple, have been performed in concert form.

Recordings

Selected awards and commissions

Awards

• Copland House Borromeo String Quartet Award (2008)
• Aaron Copland Award (2007)
• Westchester Prize for New Work (2001)
• American Composers Forum Faith Partners residency (2001-2002)
• Cantors Assembly's Max Wohlberg Award for distinguished achievement in the field of Jewish composition (2003)
• Yale University's Sudler Prize for outstanding achievement in the creative arts

Commissioning grants received

• Meet the Composer/ National Endowment for the Arts
• New York State Council on the Arts
• Westchester Arts Council

Residencies

• The MacDowell Colony
• Yaddo
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
• American Lyric Theater