Joel Cohen

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a brief biography
Joel Cohen is a leading authority in the field of medieval and Renaissance musical performance. He has received widespread acclaim as performer, conductor, and writer/commentator in his chosen field, and his unique style of program building has made the Boston Camerata ensemble famous on five continents.

Mr. Cohen studied composition at Harvard University. Awarded a Danforth Fellowship, he spent the next two years in Paris as a student of Nadia Boulanger. He has taught and lectured at many East Coast universities, including Harvard, Yale, Brandeis, and Amherst. Abroad, he has given seminars and workshops at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, at the Royal Opera of Brussels, in Spain, Singapore, and Japan. His professional honors include membership in Phi Beta Kappa, the Erwin Bodky award in early music, the Signet Society medal from Harvard. He is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic.

As lutenist, Mr. Cohen has appeared with numerous European ensembles. He has frequently accompanied tenor Hugues Cuénod. More recently, his duo recitals with soprano Anne Azéma have taken him to many parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia. His conducting appearances include two seasons at the Brussels opera, as well as invitations to the Aix-en-Provence Festival (1989) and the Tanglewood Festival (1992, 1994, 1995).

Mr. Cohen's chosen repertoires span many centuries and countries, and over thirty LP-CD programs have been recorded under his direction, for Nonesuch, Telefunken, Harmonia Mundi, Erato, and other labels. He has, however, taken a special interest in French music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and early Baroque. In 1989, his recording of Tristan et Iseult , based on original medieval sources, won the Grand Prix du Disque of the Académie Charles Cros, Paris. In early 1993, his recording of the Requiem by seventeenth-century Provençal composer Jean Gilles, realised at the Aix-en-Provence festival, was enthusiastically received by the French press and public. Thanks to a series of CD recordings, New Britain (1989), The American Vocalist (1992), An American Christmas (1993) , and Simple Gifts (1995), his pioneering work in the roots of early American music has also won extensive praise.

In 1990, Mr. Cohen founded a new ensemble, the Camerata Mediterranea, devoted to the performance of early-music repertoires from the Mediterranean basin. The ensemble's initial tour season took place in France, Italy, Spain, and Morocco; further tours in 1992 and 1995 brought the group's music to audiences in France, the United States, and Holland.

Joel Cohen is well known in Europe as a radio commentator on early music topics. In the U.S., his numerous media appearances have included an engagement as host of WGBH (Boston)'s "Morning Pro Musica." Mr. Cohen's first book, Reprise was published in 1985. His first video, Le Roman de Fauvel , premiered at the Louvre Museum, Paris, in October, 1991, and on French television in the spring of 1992. Shall we gather at the river, a video produced with Erato-Warner, was widely diffused on American cable and French T.V. in 1992 and 1993; his arrangements of early American tunes provided the inspiration for much of the score to the film Geronimo (1994).

Summer Workshop in Provence

Cohen's recordings with Cuénod
reissued on CD

Other recording news...

Among the Boston Camerata's recent recordings for Erato are "Trav'ling Home: American Spirituals, 1770-1870" and Carmina Burana . "Angels", an original musical fantasy based on Gregorian chants and early American hymns and spirituals, was released in the U.S. in May 1997.