Swiss Global Artistic Foundation

Twenty-year-old composer Nell Shaw Cohen studies with Michael Gandolfi at New England Conservatory, where she was awarded a top merit scholarship in composition. Born in San Francisco, Ms Cohen was raised in California and New York. Before shifting her focus to chamber music, she pursued a career in progressive rock as a composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist. Longtime Village Voice music editor Chuck Eddy reviewed her original album Tempus in Harp Magazine, saying Ms Cohen "thrice comes close to climbing the pomp heights of 70s rock...with Yes-like ornateness". The recordings of her compositions presented at the 4th Annual Playhouse Project Benefit Concert featured performances by members of the renowned vocal ensemble Lionheart, and two of the East Coast's leading new music groups: Fireworks Ensemble and Alarm Will Sound.

Two of Ms Cohen's chamber ensemble works were premiered in October and November 2008 on the Tuesday Night New Music concert series at New England Conservatory, and her string quartet "The Course of Empire", inspired by Thomas Cole's painting cycle of the same name, will be premiered by an NEC Honors Ensemble in February 2009. One of Ms Cohen's dreams is to write opera, and she plans to compose and direct a chamber opera, and a related multi-voiced song cycle, in 2009-2010. In the long term, she plans to pursue mixed media collaborations in film, dance, theater, visual art, as well as musical collaborations outside of the classical genre.

About the inspiration for "Memory":

My inspiration often comes from an extra-musical source in combination with particular musical goals, as in the case of "Memory", my piece for vocal ensemble. When I first began composing chamber music, I was immersing myself in recordings by the Hilliard Ensemble (the British vocal quartet), both of Medieval and Renaissance music and new works that were written for them; especially those by Ivan Moody, Stephen Hartke, and Piers Hellawell. A small vocal ensemble is capable of expressing a unique kind of immediacy and subtlety that is very compelling to me. Vocal ensemble also offers a greater variety of colors and textural possibilities for setting text than solo voice. I knew I wanted to write something for this medium.

During this same period, a growing interest in historical literature led me to St. Augustine's "Confessions". I found myself fascinated by the ruminations of this Catholic bishop from 1,600 years ago, a distant being whose writing seemed as near as a letter from a friend, as present and alive as a whisper in my ear. The book is written as an extended rhetorical question to God, but is essentially an exploration of the mysteries of human experience. He asked questions that are completely familiar and universal, yet often so personal and internal as never to be verbalized from one person to another: why do I act this way? Why do I think this? What is this experience that I'm having? Augustine communicated a complete inner world with clarity and poetry.

This text seemed to suit perfectly the special quality of a vocal ensemble, and it became clear that a particular passage from "Confessions" about memory and sense was exactly what I'd been searching for. From that moment, the bulk of "Memory" formed relatively quickly. I found a key to the gateway of my musical creativity in Augustine's writing. The words, the flow and conceptual arc of his ideas, and the content, tone, and power of those ideas gave me a solid structure on which to build, and allowed me to articulate the music which had been bottled up, fermenting within me.

Writing and finishing "Memory", and eventually having the privilege to hear it recorded by fantastic performers from the renowned ensemble Lionheart, proved to me for the first time that I was actually capable of creating the kind of music I was passionate about.

I'm currently working on a setting of another philosophical text: an art song for mezzo soprano with clarinet, horn and cello, based on poetry by Muhammad Iqbal (the intellectual founder of Pakistan).

About composition in general:

Looking at what composers and ensembles are doing today, there is an unprecedented variety in new music. While it can be both daunting and inspiring, I'm excited by the virtually endless possibilities for what music can be. I see the contemporary composer as wielding a highly powerful tool of synthesis. A composer may select, reassemble, and bring new meaning to familiar and unfamiliar elements from the vast entirety of human endeavor, both within and beyond music, from the present through the length of history and the breadth of geography. This is a large part of why I imagine that composing will continue to fascinate me throughout my lifetime.

More information about Nell Shaw Cohen may be found at www.nellshawcohen.com.