ANNOUNCEMENTS > PRESS RELEASES

Grammy-nominated Collage New Music
to present free concert at MIT honoring
the late MIT composer Edward Cohen: Feb. 27

Premiere by Martin Boykan and new transcription by MIT's Evan Ziporyn

Cambridge, MA...Collage New Music, directed by David Hoose, will present the first Edward Cohen Memorial Concert on Monday, February 27 at 8 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium (48 Massachusetts Ave) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Admission is free.

Cohen (1940-2002), a classically trained musician inspired by jazz and devoted to new music, was a senior music lecturer at MIT for 25 years.

The program for the inaugural Edward Cohen Memorial concert will include four major chamber compositions: Cohen's "Elegy" (1977), featuring noted soprano Janet Brown, and "Sextet" (1961); "Duomo" (1997) by Marjorie Merryman (Cohen's widow, who is Drake Professor of Humanities and Fine Arts at Macalester College); and "In Eius Memoriam" (1968) by Seymour Shifrin, who was Cohen's composition teacher at UC Berkeley.

In addition, there will be two short works for piano solo: a new work, "Eulogy-E.C.," written especially for the concert, dedicated to Cohen's memory by Martin Boykan, a distinguished composer and close personal friend of Cohen's and the Irving Fine Professor of Music at Brandeis University; and a transcription of "I Should Care" from a recording by Thelonius Monk. Cohen adored Monk, and this transcription was done by MIT's Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music Evan Ziporyn as a gift for Cohen shortly before he died.

Cohen was greatly respected and loved as a colleague and teacher at MIT said Peter Child, professor of music at MIT. "When Ed died we lost a mainstay of the composition and theory department," Child said. "The outpouring of encomia at Ed's memorial service by his colleagues from MIT and elsewhere testified to his immense talent, his seriousness and artistic integrity as a composer, and the personal value that we placed upon him as a colleague," Child continued.

In Cohen's honor, MIT's Music and Theater Arts Section set up a memorial fund, supported primarily by private donations. "The purpose of this fund is to finance a concert series, with concerts every one or two years, each of which will always feature at least one of Ed's compositions," Child said.

Cohen, who composed works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles and orchestra, as well as two operas, also won acclaim off-campus. "Forgive the stereotype, but university professors aren't supposed to compose music like this," wrote Richard Buell in his Boston Globe review of Cohen's 60th birthday concert in 2001. "What kind of 'voice' has this music?" Buell continued. "A surprisingly lyric, long-spanned one, quite striking once you get past the wide registral span of the melodies and a tonal language that, though obviously 'modern,' leaves diatonic afterimages in the mind. And all of it built like a steel trap."

Cohen received awards and commissions from the Massachusetts Council for the Arts, the MIT Council for the Arts, Tanglewood Music Center and Brandeis University, where he taught for 13 years before joining the faculty at MIT. His clarinet quintet was released on the CRI label.

Performers at Collage's Edward Cohen Memorial Concert will include: Janet Brown, soprano; Linda Toote, flute; Peggy Pearson, oboe; Robert Annis, clarinet; Catherine French, violin; Anne Black, viola; Joel Moerschel, cello; Christopher Oldfather, piano; Craig McNutt, percussion.

Collage New Music, founded in 1972 by Frank Epstein, commissions, performs, and records contemporary classical music, and provides an arena for the union of composer, performer, and listener through engaging pre-concert lectures, thoughtful and innovative programming, and informal gatherings. Collage recently received a Grammy nomination for Best Small Ensemble Performance for its 2006 recording of "Mottetti di Montale," composed by MIT Institute Professor John Harbison.

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