Jeffrey Cohan,
who "can play several superstar flutists one might name under
the table"
according to The New York Times, has received international acclaim
on the modern flute, as one of the foremost specialists
on
flutes of the renaissance, baroque, classical and
romantic periods. An ardent spokesman for the music of present
day composers as well as lesser-known composers from the past six
centuries, he is the only person to win both the Erwin Bodky Award in Boston, and the highest prize awarded in the Flanders Festival International Concours Musica Antiqua in Brugge,
Belgium, two of the most prestigious awards for
performers of early music. He won First Prize in
the Olga Koussevitzky Young Artist Competition in New
York City. His solo debut recital in Lincoln Center's
Alice Tully Hall was sponsored by the Martha Baird
Rockefeller Fund for Music.
Cohan has performed
extensively in 25 countries, having received the
highest rating from the Music Panel of the National
Endowment for the Arts. He has performed throughout Europe,
Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and for the
American Arts America Program in the South
Pacific, South America, Turkey, Portugal and Spain. He has recorded for NPR in the
United States, and for national radio and television in
Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium,
Holland, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, and has performed
for many European and American festivals.
Born in Iowa, Jeffrey Cohan began playing the flute in Texas
at the age of ten and studied oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle before winning three consecutive Brechemin Scholarships, then
the University's highest competitive award in music, and a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for performance with the University's Contemporary Group. A French Government Grant sponsored study in Paris with flutists Michel Debost and Maxence Larrieu;
other teachers have included James C. Scott in Baltimore, Samuel Baron in New York, and Felix Skowronek in Seattle. He studied the Japanese shakuhachi and the South Indian flute at the American Society for Eastern Arts Summer Festival, and
won the Bodky and Flanders Festival prizes within
just over two years of the beginning of his study of historical flutes. He received the Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts Degrees from the University of Washington, and the Master of Music Degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Currently Artistic Director of the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival (Washington, DC), the Cascade Early Music Festival (Leavenworth, Washington) and the Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival (Illinois/Iowa), Mr. Cohan has been a faculty member at the Indiana University
(Bloomington), the University of Northern Iowa, Augustana College and Grinnell College.
He has been artistic director of Chicago's Hyde Park Chamber Music Festival, the period instrument concert series Concert Spirituel
in Seattle and Chicago, Millennium, a 20th-century chamber music series in Seattle,
and Echoes: Chamber Music at the Frye Museum in Seattle. He champions the
music of contemporary composers, particularly in the Pacific
Northwest and in Slovenia, and has premiered many works which
have been written for and premiered by him, including new flute concerti by Roupen Shakarian, William O. Smith, Robert Kechley
and Huntley Beyer, all composed and premiered since 2000. Mr.
Cohan has unearthed and given the present-day premieres of
numerous unpublished late 17th- through early 20th-century works
from European and American libraries. |