Chamber Music from Six Centuries
~ Renaissance through Contemporary • always on Period Instruments ~

Spring 2008 performances
- additional spring programs to be announced -
 please also see www.cemf.org for Cascade Early Music Festival March/April 2008 performances
in Leavenworth and Bellingham

$15 suggested donation/free will offering.
Youth through age 18 are encouraged to attend for free.
for more information please call (800) 281-8026

 

The following program has been POSTPONED (date to be announced):

The New SansSouci
Jeffrey Cohan (flute)
George Shangrow (harpsichord)
Ronald Patterson (violin)
and the SansSouci Ensemble

New compositions (concerti and chamber music) for flute, violin, harpsichord and strings:
world premieres written for this performance by Robert Kechley and Huntley Beyer
Promenades by Bohuslav Martinu   •   Deux Interludes by Jacques Ibert

Six Century Solo Flute Extravaganza
 Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 7:30 PM
• SEATTLE (University District): Christ Episcopal Church
1305 NE 47th Street (at Brooklyn)

In a SIX CENTURY SOLO FLUTE EXTRAVAGANZA Jeffrey Cohan will play 14 transverse flutes from the renaissance through the present. Flutes to be heard will include great bass, bass, tenor and descant renaissance flutes, baroque one-keyed flutes, 6- keyed flutes made while Mozart and Beethoven were alive, and modern flute. The program will include music by JS Bach, Telemann, Kuhlau, Bozza, Debussy and Damase in addition to flutist-composers Virgiliano, Basssano and Van Eyck in the 16th and 17th centuries,18th-century flutists Hotteterre, Quantz, Blavet and Devienne and unpublished works from the Library of Congress by 19th-century flutists Tulou and Fürstenau.

 “He seemed almost like a Pan from Greek myth who had come from the cold north for a ‘soirée d'un faun’...The listener experienced the usual and the unusual in great perfection.” —Berner Tagblatt Bern, Switzerland

“What Jeffrey Cohan elicits from his baroque traverso... borders on the miraculous.” —Darmstadter Echo, Darmstadt, Germany

J.S. Bach: The Complete Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord
Jeffrey Cohan (baroque flute) & George Shangrow (harpsichord)
  • WHIDBEY ISLAND on Saturday, April 19 at 7:30 PM
Trinity Lutheran Church at Woodard Road and SR 525 in Freeland • (360) 331-5191

Jeffrey Cohan baroque flute
 George Shangrow harpsichord

Johann Sebastian Bach
 The Complete Flute Sonatas

 
In addition to the Partita for solo flute by Johann Sebastian Bach, four of the sonatas with harpsichord (or other instruments) are written for flute with obbligato, or fully written out, harpsichord, with Bach generally providing an additional melody line for the right hand of the harpsichord in addition to the bass line. Bach was the first to make extensive use of this format in his sonatas for solo instruments. The remaining three sonatas are for flute with continuo, or a bass line for the left hand (and other accompanying bass instruments if desired) with numerical figures implying harmonies which are “realized” by the keyboardist in an improvised accompaniment. Although three of the sonatas are suspected by some to have been composed by one of Bach’s sons or pupils, they no more clearly match the sons' compositions stylistically than do they the music of Johann Sebastian. 

 

—WASHINGTON POST 2003 (Joan Reinthaler)
"[Cohan and 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. The music [Bach] produced was exuberant, joyous and lyrical. It was these qualities that Cohan and Shangrow communicated."

Johann Sebastian Bach (additional Jeffrey Cohan reviews in German):

—Holsteinischer Courier (Kadja Grönke)
„Unter seinen Händen blühte und atmete alles, wurde jedes Werk so kostbar, daß man sich in diesem musikalischen Universum beinahe wie ein Eindringling vorkam. In J.S. Bachs Sarabande aus der Partita für Flöte solo schein die Zeit stillzustehen, und die Töne begannen, aus sich selbst heraus zu leuchten.“

—Braunschweiger Zeitung       "Zauber der Traversflöte"
 „Seine affecktreiche Interpretation [J.S. Bachs Solopartita in a-Moll, BWV 1013], der er allerdings auch mancherlei rhythmische Freiheiten gestattete, bezeugte Sensibilität im Nachzeichnen der melodischen Linien und gebrochenen Akkorde sowie sicheres Gespür für die stilistischen Merkmale in der Differenzierung von Dynamik und Artikulation. Zweifellos erschloß diese Darbietung, die durch die Intimität des Raumes optimale akustische Bedingungen erfuhr, über das Vergnügen an Virtuosität hinaus, tiefergreifende Hörerlebnisse.“

—Berner Zeitung
 „Jeffrey Cohan hat Bachsche Musik ganz ihrem inneren Wesen nach interpretiert, biegsam, doch fern effektvoller Raffiniertheit. Gefühlsakzente blieben aus. Und wenn irgendwo, irgendwann ein Klang, ein melodischer Bogen ans Herz rührte, so war er aus geschickt deklamierter Phrasierung erstanden und dynamischer Entfaltung der Linearität.“
 
—Wolfenbütteler Zeitung
 „An dieser Komposition [J.S. Bachs Suite in G-Dur (violoncello)] wurde das ganze Talent des jungen Flötisten offenbar. Bei seiner Interpretation wurden alle kompositorischen Feinheiten hörbar. Besonderen Wert legte er auf die Ausgestaltung der latenten Mehrstimmigkeit. Auch nahm er sich alle agogischen Freiheiten, die eine solche Solopartie erfordert, um lebendig zu werden.“
 
—Goslarsche Zeitung (Marianne van Wezel)        "Musik für Flöte und Cembalo auf hohem Niveau"
 Jeffrey Cohan … zeigte sich in diesem ungleich schwieriger zu gestaltenden Programm als ein Kenner Bachscher Musik, der ihren musikalisch und technisch hohen Ansprüchen gerecht wurde. Sein meisterhaftes Flötenspiel zeigte Überlegenheit und Reife.  So blies er mit vollendeter Atemtechnik und einem warmen Ton lange Melodiebögen so schön aus, daß die Musik selbst zu atmen begann.“

JACOB VAN EYCK in the ROSE GARDEN


~ dates to be announced ~
In the Rose Garden at the Woodland Park Zoo
(by the south entrance to the Zoo)
Jeffrey Cohan performs Variations by
Jacob Van Eyck (1589-1657)
on Favorite Melodies of the early 17th Century
for Solo Renaissance Descant Transverse Flute

In these free twilight performances in one of Seattle's most glorious settings, Jeffrey Cohan performs variations on songs by Giulio Caccini and John Dowland, Christmas carols and Psalm tunes by Jacob van Eyck, performed on a copy of a descant renaissance flute similar to one which he may have played.

In addition to broadcasting melody throughout the city from the bell towers of Utrect, the blind carillonneur played his transverse flute and recorder at ground level in the public gardens and church yard at St. Johns Church for ten years before the city raised  Jacob van Eyck's salary to compensate him for these public serenades on a  more intimate level, as the residents had become so enamored with his improvised virtuoso embellishments on favorite tunes of his day of all sorts. 143 of his largely improvised variations on favorite melodies from Holland and abroad were published in "Der Fluyten Lust-hof" ("The Flutist's Pleasure-Garden") in the 1640s.

From 1725 until 1790, the Concert Spirituel in Paris offered outstanding sacred, orchestral and chamber music performances presented by the leading instrumentalists and composers of Europe, often featuring the most innovative new music of the day. Since the early 1980s Concert Spirituel performances in Seattle and Chicago have featured harpsichordists Elisabeth Wright, Hans-Jürgen Schnoor (Germany), David Schrader and John Whitelaw (Belgium), violinists Stanley Ritchie, Ingrid Matthews and Jörg Michael Schwarz, lutenist Stephen Stubbs, gambists Susan Napper and Mary Springfels and baroque cellist Elaine Scott Banks.

To be included on the mailing list and for further information regarding future Concert Spirituel performances, please contact us:

concertspirituel@aol.com
(800) 281-8026.

~ Concert Spirituel is grateful to Seattle Community Network for their support ~
Seattle Community Network - SCN Arts Menu
Last update April 2008