Critical Acclaim for CHCMF
"A brilliant performance ... eloquently played ... close to
the essence of chamber music." [J. Reilly Lewis, John Moran and Jeffrey Cohan]
Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post, June 26, 2000
"A virtuoso at conveying myriad colors" ...
"The audience clearly was entranced ... flutist Jeffrey Cohan
captivated young and old.”
Cecelia Porter, The Washington Post, July 14, 2001
"Baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan and harpsichordist George
Shangrow give
new meaning to the intimacy implicit in the genre of chamber music...
They
have forged not only an exquisitely subtle collaboration but also a
common
scholarly interpretation of how Bach would have had the music
performed.
"They responded intuitively to each other's rhythmic
elasticity and echoed
each other's elaborate ornamentations with what sounded like
spontaneous
inspiration... Almost as impressive was the silent attentiveness that
their
musicmaking commanded.
"Bach may have been composing for a soft instrument with a
very limited dynamic range, but the music he produced was exuberant,
joyous and lyrical. It
was these qualities that Cohan and Shangrow communicated..." Joan
Reinthaler, The Washington Post, July 16, 2002
"Jeffrey
Cohan has made Slovenian music a focal point of this year's Capitol
Hill Chamber Music Festival. The Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival
got off to an exhilarating start Wednesday night at St. Mark's Church.
Marking the festival's sixth year, artistic director and flutist
Jeffrey Cohan assembled a trio of concerts that brought to public
attention some largely unknown works -- including two world premieres
-- by active composers from Slovenia. From piece to piece, Cohan's
artistry was evident as he breathed life into his instrument, seeming
to find no limit to its sonic possibilities, ways of articulating
phrases and modes of expressing composers' personal styles -- as in
Brina Jez's beautifully moody "Three Little Pieces." Chappell gave a
brilliant account of Kopac's Preludes for solo piano, and Cain's
sweetness of timbre and vocal power suited compositions by Brina Jez
and Kopac." Cecelia Porter, The Washington Post, August 5, 2005
Praise
for CHCMF
For Frederick the Great, a Concert
of the Same Quality WASHINGTON
POST Monday, July 2012
The second of two concerts in this year’s Capitol Hill Chamber Music
Festival, held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church Sunday night, was devoted
to music from the Prussian court of Frederick the Great. The theme is a
timely one since Germany celebrates this year the 300th birthday of the
Prussian king who, besides being a brilliant military strategist, was
also a passionate musician. Fittingly, the festival’s artistic
director, Jeffrey Cohan, played a baroque flute that is a replica of an
instrument made for Frederick by his teacher, Johann Joachim Quantz,
now in the collections of the Library of Congress.
Cohan is a wonderful player who exploits all the richly expressive
potential of the baroque wooden flute with ease and subtlety. With his
partners, harpsichordist Joseph Gascho and cellist Gozde Yasar, Cohan
played sonatas by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Georg Benda and Quantz —
all musicians employed by Frederick’s at his Potsdam palace, Sanssouci
— as well as a sonata by the monarch himself.
Late in his life, Johann Sebastian Bach visited Emanuel, the most
famous of his several composer sons, in Potsdam. “Old Bach” was given a
warm welcome at court, and Frederick asked Bach if he could improvise
on a theme he had composed. Bach complied, evidently to the king’s
satisfaction. But later, Bach used Frederick’s theme as the basis for
one of his late masterpieces, “The Musical Offering.” Selections from
this sublime work, along with a Bach violin sonata adapted for flute,
were the culmination of a thoughtfully conceived and most enjoyable
evening. -- Patrick Rucker
At St. Mark's,Good Things Come in Trios
WASHINGTON
POST
Thursday, July 2, 2009
It's
probably fanciful imagining a large audience turning up to hear obscure
chamber music at the height of summer vacation season. But the mere 29
heads I counted at St. Mark's Episcopal Church for Tuesday's Capitol
Hill Chamber Music Festival recital seemed an especially pathetic
showing for such a stylishly played evening. St. Mark's, one of
Washington's more strikingly beautiful and acoustically friendly
churches, added just the right bloom to the gentle buzz of the
festival's period instruments. Tuesday's program -- commemorating the
200th anniversary of the deaths of Haydn and his little-known
contemporary, Carl Wilhelm Glösch, and the 250th birthday of François
Devienne -- was predictable for a festival whose artistic director,
Jeffrey Cohan, is a specialist in baroque and classical flute: All five
pieces played were 18th-century trios for flute, violin and cello. If
such flute, flute and more flute programming produced an inevitable
sameness of tone, these lesser trios by the great Haydn, and great
trios by the lesser Glösch, Devienne and their contemporary Franz Anton
Hoffmeister met in a middle ground of high competence (the dark-hued
Devienne D Minor Trio marginally more memorable than the other scores),
and all were played with lived-in ease and affection. -- Joe Banno
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About the Performers
RISA BROWDER’s
interest in historical performance on violin, viola and viola d’amore
ranges from the seventeenth century to the romantic era. After
graduating from Oberlin Conservatory and completing graduate studies at
the Royal College of Music in London, and the Schola Cantorum in Basel,
Ms. Browder began her professional career in Europe with Academy of
Ancient Music, English Concert, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Purcell
Quartet, and London Baroque among others. She has performed as
soloist with the Folger Consort, Washington Bach Consort
(concertmaster), Capriole, Boston Bach, Smithsonian Chamber Players,
and REBEL. Ms. Browder is co-director of Modern Musick, a period
instrument chamber orchestra which debuted in 2001 to high acclaim in
Washington, DC. Recording credits include Dorian, Chandos,
Deutsche Grammophon, Virgin Classics, and EMI. She also enjoys
teaching and is on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory where she
teaches baroque violin and viola and together with her husband, John
Moran, directs the Baltimore Baroque Band.
CARRIE KRAUSE,
baroque violinist, resides as concertmaster of the Bozeman Symphony
(MT) and New Trinity Baroque. She performs regularly as soloist and
ensemble member for ensembles throughout the United States, including
Apollo's Fire (Cleveland), Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Pacific Baroque,
the San Francisco Bach Choir, Chatham Baroque, New York State Baroque,
Portland Baroque, Passamezzo Moderno, Baroque Chamber Orchestra of
Colorado, Clarion, American Classical Orchestra, and Concert Royale in
New York. Festival Engagements include the Leipzig Bach Festival as
soloist, the Belgrade Early Music Festival in Serbia, Sastamalla
Gregoriana in Finland, the Utrecht Early Music Festival, Festival dans
les Jardins with William Christie, and the BBC Proms. Carrie has worked
under such conductors as Jordi Savall, Ton Koopman, Richard Egarr, Nic
McGegan, and Masaaki Suzuki. Carrie received degrees from Carnegie
Mellon under Andres Cardenes and a masters degree from the Cleveland
Institute of music in violin performance and Suzuki Pedagogy, and
recently graduated with a second masters from the Juilliard School in
Historical Performance. She resides in Bozeman, MT, where she performs
with the Meritage String Quartet and teaches a studio of 35 students.
An avid adventurer, Carrie placed first in her age group in the
Springfield Missouri Marathon and second in her age group in the Old
Gabe 50k Trail race.
DONGSOK SHIN,
harpsichordist, was born in Boston and played the modern piano from the
age of four. Since the early 1980's, he has specialized exclusively on
harpsichord, organ, and fortepiano. A member of the internationally
acclaimed baroque ensemble REBEL since 1997 and a regular performer at
the Carmel Bach Festival, Mr. Shin has appeared with the American
Classical Orchestra, ARTEK, Concert Royal, Early Music New York, Carmel
Bach Festival, Mark Morris Dance Group, the New York Philharmonic, the
Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He has
toured throughout North America, Europe, and Mexico, has been heard on
numerous radio broadcasts nationally and internationally, and has
recorded for ATMA Classique, Bridge Records, Dorian/Sono Luminus,
Hänssler Classic, Helicon, Lyrichord, and Newport Classic. He was a
founding member of the Mannes Camerata, receiving international
critical acclaim as music director for their productions of early
baroque operas, and he was a member, as well as a guest director of NYS
Baroque in Ithaca, NY. In his spare time, he tunes, maintains and
demonstrates antique keyboards at the Metropolitan Museum and for the
Metropolitan Opera, and is well known as a recording engineer, producer
and editor of numerous early music recordings. He is married to early
keyboard player and director of ARTEK, Gwendolyn Toth, and they are the
proud parents of three children.
WILLIAM SIMMS,
lute, theorbo & guitar, is an active performer of early music
performing on guitar, lute and theorbo. He appears appears regularly
with the Bach Sinfonia and performs with Apollo's Fire, Harmonious
Blacksmith, Olde Friends Concert Artists and the Baroque Chamber
Orchestra of Colorado. He has performed numerous operas, canatatas and
oratorios with such ensembles as Cleveland Opera, the Baltimore
Consort, Opera Lafayette, Opera Vivente, American Opera Theatre and the
Washington National Opera. Venues include The National Cathedral,
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Library of Congress, The Corcoran
Gallery, Wolftrap and The Kennedy Center. This past summer Simms
performed in Handel's Alcina at Wolftrap. He received a Bachelor of
Music degree from the College of Wooster and a Master of Music degree
from the Peabody Conservatory and serves on the faculties of Towson
University, Mt. St. Mary's University, Interlochen Arts Camp as well as
Hood College, where he is founder and director of the Hood College
Early Music Ensemble. He has recorded for the Dorian, Centaur and
Eclectra labels.
MARLISA DEL CID WOODS
is highly acclaimed as a solo artist, chamber musician, and orchestral
violinist. She joined Pershing’s Own United States Army Orchestra in
2000 upon completion of her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees at the
Cleveland Institute of Music. Her versatility in different styles has
been featured in many of the world’s leading venues - from Bluegrass at
the White House to Brahms Double Concerto at the Kennedy Center. Ms.
Woods has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony
Orchestra, Concert Artists of Baltimore, Alexandria Symphony, National
Gallery Orchestra, Canton Symphony, Youngstown Symphony, and the Erie
Philharmonic. As a baroque violinist, she has performed with Washington
Bach Consort, National Cathedral Baroque Orchestra, Bach Sinfonia,
Apollo’s Fire, Opera Lafayette, Harmonious Blacksmith, and the Vivaldi
Project. Ms. Woods can be heard on the Eclectra , Lyrichord, and Dorian
labels. Her most recent recording with the Bach Sinfonia and acclaimed
lutenist Ronn McFarlane was selected as CD pick of the week by WETA
90.9FM radio.
Artistic Director and flutist JEFFREY COHAN has performed as
soloist in 25 countries, most recently Ukraine, Slovenia and Germany,
on all transverse flutes from the Renaissance through the present, and
has won the Erwin Bodky Award (Boston) and the top prize in the
Flanders Festival International Concours Musica Antiqua (Brugge,
Belgium), two of the most important prizes for period instrument
performance in America and Europe. He has premiered many concerti and
other works by Slovenian and American composers. He also directs the
Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival in Illinois and Iowa and the Salish
Sea Early Music Festival. He can “play many superstar flutists one
might name under the table” according to the New York Times, and is
“The Flute Master” according to the Boston Globe.
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