Based in the Hudson Valley, NY
Founder & Director, Landscape Music
Website: nellshawcohen.com
“My passion for nature, landscape, and place has infused my work, from tone poems for symphony orchestra to multimedia pieces for chamber ensemble with video. My Landscape Music encompasses reflections upon my personal experiences and memories of places, as well as reinterpretations of landscapes depicted by visual artists and writers.”
Biography
Nell Shaw Cohen (they/she, b. 1988) evokes landscapes, visual art, and the lives of mavericks in lyrical works of music for concert and stage. Sauntering Songs, a 75-minute live album of their choral and vocal works commissioned and recorded by Skylark Vocal Ensemble, featuring performances by Juventas New Music Ensemble, was released in 2023. Cohen’s music has also appeared on two GRAMMY-nominated albums, and has been commissioned by Houston Grand Opera, Emmanuel Music, Boston Choral Ensemble, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Montage Music Society, Arkansas State University Concert Choir, and soprano Laura Strickling, among others.
Cohen has received an OPERA America Commissioning Grant for Women Composers, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Arts Award, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prize from the International Alliance for Women in Music, and was named a Finalist for The American Prize in the Major Choral Works division. Previously Artist-in-Residence with Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, their operas have had workshops with Fort Worth Opera, American Opera Projects, New Dramatists, New York University, Untitled Theater Company No. 61, Harwood Museum of Art, University of Texas at San Antonio, and University of New Mexico, and they were first runner-up for the 2020 Zepick Modern Opera Competition.
Cohen earned degrees in composition from NYU and New England Conservatory, where their teachers included Herschel Garfein and Michael Gandolfi. As Founder & Director of Landscape Music (LandscapeMusic.org), an international network of composers and performers, Cohen advocates for music inspired by landscape, nature, and place. They live in the Shawangunk Mountains of New York’s Hudson Valley.
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Work Samples
Transforming Forest (2018) for violin, cello, and piano, commissioned and recorded by Montage Music Society, 2019. Learn more about this piece.
“Transforming Forest is inspired by Andy Goldsworthy‘s four site-specific land art installations in the Presidio of San Francisco, California.“
Refuge (2016) for flute, violin, cello, and percussion. Live recording by Cadillac Moon Ensemble, 2016. Learn more about this piece.
“A narrative suite following the conservation stories of three wild animals and their habitats. Composed in commemoration of the centennial of the National Park Service, the World Premiere of Refuge was given by Cadillac Moon Ensemble on a concert presenting music by members of the Landscape Music Composers Network at the Parrish Art Museum.”