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JEFFREY COHAN

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img s.gif ~ BACK TO THIS YEAR'S FESTIVAL ~

2014 Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival
15th annual period instrument chamber music festival on July 26 & August 3
Please check back soon for our 2015 schedule! (beginning July 28 and continuing in September-October)

The 2014 Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival presented two performances on period instruments.

1 • CPE BACH TRICENTENNIAL •

CPE Bach  Saturday, July 26, 2014 at 8:00 PM
      
Jeffrey Cohan ~ baroque flute
       Marlisa Del Cid Woods ~ violin
       Joseph Gascho ~ harpsichord
 
CPE BACH TRICENTENNIAL celebrates the 300th anniversary of the birth in 1714 of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach with solo and trio sonatas by Johann Sebastian Bach's most well-known son. The program will include the solo for unaccompanied flute, a harpsichord solo, the duo for flute and violin, a sonata for flute and continuo, another for obbligato harpsichord and flute, and trio sonatas for flute, violin and harpsichord. 


2 • LOUIS XIV's BASSOON •

Louis XIV  Sunday, August 3, 2014 at 8:00 PM
      
Jeffrey Cohan ~ baroque flute
       Marlisa Del Cid ~ violin
       Steven Creswell ~ viola
       Anna Marsh ~ baroque bassoon
 
LOUIS XIV's BASSOON presents the East Coast premiere of 5 five new suites from the manuscript discovered by Jeffrey Cohan in Paris which details "the little concerts given for his Majesty in the evenings” in 1713. Several of the 67 suites which were “collected and put in order by Philidor le Pere", Louis XIV's music librarian Andre Danican Philidor l'ainé, were premiered last year and included in last year's festival, and this year's presentation of 5 additional suites is performed with bassoonist Anna Marsh, baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan and violist Steve Creswell, all of whom performed this new group of suites for the first time in 8 performances in the Pacific Northwest in March, in this CHCMF performance with the addition of violinist Marlisa Del Cid Woods.



Now in its 15th year, the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival has since 2000 presented chamber music by familiar as well as little-known composers from the Renaissance through the present on Capitol Hill in period instrument performances which intend to shed new light upon early performance practice as well as contemporary works. Unpublished works from the Library of Congress are given particular attention, and many have received their modern day premieres during these concerts, in addition to premieres of works by Slovenian composers. The Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival is a nonprofit corporation in the District of Columbia.


The programs will take place at 8:00 p.m., at St. Mark's Episcopal Church at 3rd & A Streets, SE in Washington, DC, just behind the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill.

The suggested donation (a free will offering) will be $20 or $25. Students 18 years of age and under are free. Tickets will be available at www.brownpapertickets.com and at the door. For further information please call St. Mark's at (202) 543-0053 or email chcmf@aol.com.

 
Critical Acclaim for CHCMF

"A brilliant performance ... eloquently played ... close to the essence of chamber music." 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

  About the Performers

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.

Conductor and harpsichordist JOSEPH GASCHO has won numerous grants and prizes, including first prize in the 2002 Jurow International Harpsichord Competition, and the Pomeroy Prize from the University of Maryland. Recent performing highlights include a world premiere recording of a newly discovered aria by J.S. Bach for National Public Radio, a production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Aix-en-Provence, France, conducting Vivaldi’s Gloria at the Magnolia Baroque Festival, and performing his own transcriptions of works by Bach and Charpentier. He recently conducted Vivaldi’s Eurilla e Alcindo at the University of Maryland, and Handel’s Tamerlano with Opera Vivente. He also coaches chamber music and coordinates accompanying and performs at the Amherst Early Music Festival, and has performed at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute and the International Baroque Institute at Longy. He is pursuing a D.M.A. at the University of Maryland, where he also teaches basso continuo and performance practice. He also teaches at George Washington University.

Baroque bassoonist ANNA MARSH is a Baroque wind specialist, who is also fluent in Renaissance, Classical and Modern instruments. Her interests lie principally in the double‐reed family, though she also performs on the Renaissance and Baroque recorder.  This year she will be a featured soloist with the Boulder Bach Festival and New York State Baroque. Originally from Tacoma, WA, Anna appears regularly with Opera Lafayette (DC), Tempesta di Mare (Philadelphia), Ensemble Caprice (Montreal), Clarion Society (NYC), and Arion Orchestre Baroque (Montreal), Tafelmusik (Toronto), Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Washington Bach Consort (DC), and Musica Angelica (LA), among others.  She has been the featured soloist with the Foundling Orchestra with Marion Verbruggen, Arion Orchestre Baroque, The Buxtehude Consort, The Dryden Ensemble, The Indiana University Baroque Orchestra and others.  She co‐directs Ensemble Lipzodes and has taught both privately and at festivals and master classes at the Eastman School of Music, Los Angeles Music and Art School, the Amherst Early Music, and Hawaii Performing Arts Festivals and the Albuquerque, San Francisco Early Music Society and Western Double Reed Workshop.  She has also been heard on Performance Today, Harmonia and CBC radio and recorded for Chandos, Analekta, Centaur, Naxos, the Super Bowl, Avie, and Musica Omnia.  Marsh has studied music and German studies at Mt. Holyoke College, The Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California and Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

Violinist MARLISA DEL CID WOODS, a native Washingtonian, is highly acclaimed as a solo artist, chamber musician, and orchestral violinist.  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. 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 performs regularly with the National Cathedral Baroque Orchestra, Bach Sinfonia, Harmonious Blacksmith, the Vivaldi Project, Opera Lafayette and the Washington Bach Consort, and for four seasons with Apollo's Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra. She started her violin studies under the Suzuki Method with Robert Cole at the age of four, was a National Symphony Orchestra Fellow and was concertmaster and soloist with the American Youth Philharmonic. Woods studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music with David Updegraff and Donald Weilerstein earning both bachelors and masters degrees. She studied baroque violin at Case Western Reserve and privately with Marilyn McDonald.  In 2000, Woods returned to the Washington, D.C. area as a member of the Pershing's Own U.S. Army Orchestra. Last summer, Woods performed Ravel's String Quartet and the Martinu Madrigals for a live audience on NPR in “Live from the Atherton” in Honolulu, Hawaii. This past season's solo engagements included performances of the Shostakovich First Violin Concerto with the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic and Lalo's Symphony Espagnole with the Annandale Symphony. 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.

Violist STEVE CRESWELL performs on historical instruments with Pacific Baroque Orchestra, the Seattle Baroque Orchestra and Early Music Vancouver. He has recorded and toured internationally with Tafelmusik of Toronto, and REBEL from New York. On modern instruments, he has worked with dance companies, new music ensembles, and unusual string collectives–most recently, SCRAPE! the brainchild of Cornish School for the Arts professor, Jim Knapp. He also a member of Northwest Sinfonietta, a modern chamber orchestra hailing from Tacoma, Washington, and has played in the Whidbey Island Music Festival. Stephen performs frequently as concertmaster of Seattle Choral Company, and teaches at the Academy of Music Northwest in Bellevue, WA. In November, 2010, he jointly launched a new classical string ensemble in Seattle: the Kügeln Trio, with colleagues Nathan Whittaker and Laurel Wells.

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updated on July 14, 2014