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Joel Cohen is an American musician specializing in early music repertoires. [1] Cohen graduated from Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island in 1959, and Brown University in 1963. He continued graduate education at Harvard University. From 1968 to 2008, he was the director of the Boston Camerata, a prominent American early music ensemble. He remains connected to the Boston Camerata as Music Director Emeritus. Cohen founded the Camerata Mediterranea in 1990 and incorporated it as a nonprofit research institute in France in 2007. He plays the lute and guitar, as well as sings. He is best known as an organizer and creator of concert programs and sound recordings. He has also written extensively on musical topics. In recent years, Cohen's research and performance activities have centered on early American repertoires (including Shaker song), as well as Southern European repertoires of the Middle Ages. Many of his projects in this latter category involve collaboration with Middle Eastern musicians.
He has collaborated very frequently with his wife, French soprano Anne Azéma, the Artistic Director (since 2008) of the Boston Camerata, and has also worked with numerous choirs, including the Schola Cantorum and student choruses at Brown, Brandeis, Harvard and other universities. His professional honors include the Signet Society Medal (Harvard University), the Howard Mayer Brown Award, the Erwin Bodky Award, the Georges Longy Award, the Grand Prix du Disque (France) and the Edison Prize (Netherlands). He was a government-appointed artist-in-residence in the Netherlands during the year 2000 and is an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic.
Cohen studied composition with Randall Thompson at Harvard University, and musicology with Gustave Reese, Nino Pirotta, John Ward, and Elliot Forbes, at that same institution. He was awarded a Danforth Fellowship and spent two years in Paris as a student of Nadia Boulanger. In the 1970s he spent two seasons as a producer of musical radio programs for the French National Radio (France Musique), where he originated the concept of an all-day musical celebration on the days of the solstice, an idea later to be adapted as a national celebration each June 21, in France. This annual event is currently known as the "Fête de la Musique" also known as "World Music Day".
Cohen's initial projects in the early music field were in the area of the French and English Renaissance. His enthusiasm for medieval and Renaissance music continues to be reflected in recent projects, including a series of commissioned programs (2001–2008) for the Gardner Museum, Boston, around Italian repertoires of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His forays into baroque repertoire have been more episodic but attracted widespread comment and attention: the first early-instruments recording of Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas"(Harmonia Mundi, 1980), and a well-received recording of Jean Gilles' "Requiem" (Erato, 1990), among others. From 1986 forward, many of his new Eurocentric projects dealt with music of the Middle Ages, including a medieval retelling of the "Tristan and Iseult" legend (Erato, Grand Prix du Disque, 1987).
Cohen's interest in American vernacular traditions dates from his childhood lessons on folk guitar, and his experience in later student years as a jazz bassist. He was introduced to southern shapenote tunebooks by his mentor at Harvard University, the composer Randall Thompson, and by Alan Lomax's field recordings of Sacred Harp sings in Alabama in 1942. Cohen later travelled to the South on several occasions to participate in Sacred Harp sings and conventions. His first program with the Boston Camerata involving extensive treatment of early American oral and written sources was "The Roots of American Music" (1976), released as an Advent cassette, and later re-recorded (1986) as "New Britain". The commercial success of this last recording, released after a lapse of several years by the French label Erato, led Cohen and the Erato label to record a series of early American programs with the Boston Camerata, including "The American Vocalist", "Trav'ling Home", and "Liberty Tree". For the 1992 celebration of the Columbus year, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival invite Cohen and the Camerata to prepare a program of early Hispanic repertoire from the New World. This project became "Nueva España", recorded by Erato and subsequently one of the Boston Camerata's most requested touring programs.
Informed by Shaker music scholar, Roger Hall, of the Shaker library at Sabbathday Lake, Maine, and its extensive musical holdings, Cohen traveled to that still-functioning community to do research on Shaker manuscript sources. He and his wife, soprano Anne Azéma, also began an enduring personal relationship with the members of the community, who agreed to record and perform their music in the company of the Boston Camerata and collaborating choirs. Two CDs of Shaker song (Simple Gifts and The Golden Harvest) commemorate these collaborations, which continued for several seasons from 1992 forward.
In 2004 Cohen and the Finnish choreographer Tero Saarinen created a dance piece, "Borrowed Light", using live Shaker music. This production has toured extensively in France, Germany, England, Sweden, Finland, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Australia, and the United States, most recently at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival (Becket, Ma.) in 2012 and the Palais de Chaillot (Paris) in 2014. Cohen co-directed and edited the music for "A Chair fit for an Angel" (2014) a Canadian documentary film, winner of several awards, built around Shaker and Shaker-related arts.
Cohen's interest in cross-cultural and intercultural musical encounters has led to projects exploring early African and Amerindian contributions to New World music ("Nueva España", cited above), and to several endeavors with Middle Eastern/Near Eastern artists.
As early as 1982, Joel and the Boston Camerata had developed a program called "The Sacred Bridge," exploring Jewish and Christian interactions during the Middle Ages. In 1988 Erato Disques decided to make a recording of this program. Still in demand after more than two decades, the recording has been reissued on Warner Classics.
The "Sacred Bridge" program continues to tour internationally. Since its inception it has undergone considerable development and now includes an important Arabic/Muslim component. Recent performances have been undertaken with the U.S.- based Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble
In 1997 Joel Cohen met the eminent Moroccan musician Mohammed Briouel for the first time. Their encounter gave birth to a major production, a selection of the thirteenth century Cantigas of King Alfonso el Sabio with European and Moroccan musicians collaborating. The recording, made in Fez, Morocco, was signed "Camerata Mediterranea," and included the participation of the Abdelkrim Rais orchestra of Fez, directed by Mr. Briouel.
The Cantigas recording won the coveted Edison Prize in 2000, and has toured extensively in the United States, Morocco, Germany, the Netherlands, and France.
"A Mediterranean Christmas", with the Boston Camerata and the Sharq Ensemble, is Cohen's most recent production exploring shared roots and musical practices. Recorded in 2005 for Warner Classics, and enthusiastically greeted by the musical press, the production has also toured live in the United States and France.
In recent seasons, Joel Cohen has also undertaken collaborations with Dünya, a Turkish music ensemble, and its leader, Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol. With Camerata Mediterranea, he produced a colloquium in early summer 2009 around the subject of cross-cultural Mediterranean musical interactions, in the French village of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert.
Salamone Rossi or Salomone Rossi was an Italian Jewish violinist and composer. He was a transitional figure between the late Italian Renaissance period and early Baroque.
Lowell Mason was an American music director and banker who was a leading figure in 19th-century American church music. Lowell composed over 1,600 hymn tunes, many of which are often sung today. His best-known work includes an arrangement of "Joy to the World" and the tune Bethany, which sets the hymn text Nearer, My God, to Thee. Mason also set music to Mary Had A Little Lamb. He is largely credited with introducing music into American public schools, and is considered the first important U.S. music educator. He has also been criticized for helping to largely eliminate the robust tradition of participatory sacred music that flourished in North America before his time.
Karl Ristenpart was a German conductor.
Erato Records is a record label founded in 1953 as Erato Disques S.A. by Philippe Loury to promote French classical music. Loury was head of éditions musicales Costallat. His first releases in France were licensed from the Haydn Society of Boston, and he made Erato's first recording in January 1953: Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Te Deum with Les Jeunesses Muslcales.
The Roman de Fauvel is a 14th-century French allegorical verse romance of satirical bent, generally attributed to Gervais du Bus, a clerk at the French royal chancery. The original narrative of 3,280 octosyllabics is divided into two books, dated to 1310 and 1314 respectively, during the reigns of Philip IV and Louis X. In 1316–7 Chaillou de Pesstain produced a greatly expanded version.
The Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras (BYSO) is a youth orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts under the artistic leadership of music director, Federico Cortese. Since 1958, BYSO has served thousands of young musicians from throughout New England with three full symphonic orchestras, two young string training orchestras, six chamber orchestras, a preparatory wind ensemble, a chamber music program and a nationally recognized instrument training program for underrepresented youth from inner-city communities called the Intensive Community Program (ICP). The 2017-2018 season marks the celebration of BYSO's 60th Anniversary. Each year, BYSO auditions approximately 850 students from throughout New England, ages 5–18, and accepts nearly 500 young musicians.
Anne Azéma is a French-born soprano, scholar, and stage director. She is currently artistic director of the Boston Camerata. She has been an important or leading singer of early music since 1993. She has created and directed programs for the Boston Camerata and is also noted as a music scholar. She is perhaps best known for performing music from the Middle Ages, lute songs from the Renaissance period, Baroque sacred music, Shaker song, and contemporary music theater. She is also a music educator and a researcher. She has performed in Japan, Germany, the US, Australia and elsewhere.
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Françoise Atlan is a French singer and ethnomusicologist, born in a Sephardic Jewish family in Narbonne, France on 27 July 1964. Her father was a lawyer and native of Béjaïa, Algeria, and her mother was a pianist and a lyrical singer.
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The Harvard University Choir, more commonly referred to as the University Choir or simply UChoir, is Harvard University's oldest choir. It has provided choral music for the Harvard Memorial Church and its predecessor church for over 180 years, and is Harvard's only professional choir. Each year, a select group of choristers also make up the Harvard Choral Fellows, who sing at the church's daily Morning Prayers service in Appleton Chapel.
Camerata Mediterranea is a French and American nonprofit organization and an international, intercultural institute of musical exchanges. Camerata Mediterranea devotes itself to research, dialogue, and pedagogy involving the diverse musical civilizations of the Mediterranean basin, encompassing Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions. It aims to revive the value of forgotten interactions and intends to reestablish a dialogue, at once artistic, intellectual and human, among civilizations.
Robert Mealy is a performer and teacher of baroque violin. He holds a joint position at the Yale School of Music and the Department of Music of Yale University, where he directs the Yale Collegium Musicum and teaches classes in musical rhetoric and historically-informed performance. He has recorded over 50 CDs of early music, ranging from Hildegard of Bingen with Sequentia, to Renaissance consorts with the Boston Camerata, to Rameau operas with Les Arts Florissants. At home in New York, he is a frequent leader and soloist with the New York Collegium, Early Music New York, the Clarion Music Society, and the ARTEK early music ensemble.
Shira Kammen is a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist.
The Boston Camerata is an early music ensemble based in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1954 by Narcissa Williamson, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as an adjunct to that museum's musical instrument collection.
Antonio de Salazar (c.1650–1715) was a Novohispano composer.
Guillaume Bouzignac was a French composer.
David Greilsammer is a pianist and conductor.
A camerata is a small chamber orchestra or choir, with up to 40 to 60 musicians.
Hanacpachap cussicuinin is a processional hymn to the Virgin Mary in the Quechua language but in a largely European sacred music style. Composed by an Inca student of Juan Pérez de Bocanegra between 1620 and 1631, a Franciscan priest, published in 1631 in the Viceroyalty of Peru making it the earliest work of vocal polyphony printed in the New World.