Jonathan Cohler
Encyclopedia
Jonathan Cohler is an American
clarinetist, conductor
and teacher
.
in physics
from Harvard University
in 1980.
Cohler studied clarinet with Boston Symphony Orchestra
clarinetists Pasquale Cardillo and Harold Wright
, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
clarinetist Karl Leister
, clarinet soloist Charles Neidich
and Frank Martin.
In 1978, he won a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center
. He also held the principal clarinet position of the Colorado Philharmonic Orchestra (now known as the National Repertory Orchestra) in 1979 under conductor Carl Topilow.
, Aspen
, Rockport
, Newport
, Martha's Vineyard and the Hamptons. He has performed frequently at the International Clarinet Association
's annual ClarinetFest and has appeared in the Dame Myra Hess
Memorial Concert Series in Chicago. His concerto appearances include Mozart's Clarinet Concerto
with the Santo Andre Orchestra in Brazil and Copland's
Clarinet Concerto
with the Evergreen Orchestra at the National Concert Hall of Taiwan in Taipei.
As a chamber musician Cohler has collaborated with members of the Emerson String Quartet
, the Muir String Quartet, the Lark Quartet, the Claremont Trio
, the Moscow Conservatory Trio, the Amadeus Trio, the New Jersey Chamber Music Society, the Boston Chamber Music Society
and The Wavehill Trio, and with Boris Berezovsky
, Ilya Kaler
, Andres Diaz
, Charles Neidich
, Laurence Lesser, Randall Hodgkinson
, Judith Gordon
, and Rasa Vitkauskaite.
Cohler's conducting engagements have included Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony
with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Caracas, Venezuela, and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker
with the Indian Hill Orchestra (Groton, Massachusetts) and the Granite State Ballet Company in New Hampshire
, and Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra
with the Texas All-State Symphony Orchestra in San Antonio. For ten years, from 1996 to 2006, he was the Music Director of the Brockton Symphony Orchestra. He is currently the Music Director of the Massachusetts Philharmonic Orchestra.
Cohler has coached groups that have won prizes in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition
, the Coleman Chamber Music Competition and the Chamber Music Foundation of New England Competition. Groups he has coached have also appeared on the national radio show From the Top
.
Cohler has been an adjudicator for international clarinet and music competitions including the 1st European Clarinet Competition, the Young Artist Competition of the International Clarinet Association, and the Canadian National Music Competition.
As of 2011, he is a member of the clarinet, chamber music and conducting faculties of the Longy School of Music
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
, The Boston Conservatory, and the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he is the Assistant Conductor of the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. He also teaches and coaches through his Advanced Chamber Music Institute in Boston, and ran the International Woodwind Festival summer school in Iowa.
In the early 1990s, Cohler founded the classical music record company Ongaku Records, Inc. As well as publishing Cohler's own recordings of chamber music, it has also released CDs of other instrumentalists, such as Tchaikovsky Competition gold-medal violinist Ilya Kaler
, Tchaikovsky Competition silver-medal cellist Suren Bagratuni and the pianist Sergey Schepkin.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
clarinetist, conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
and teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
.
Education
Cohler received a bachelor's degreeBachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1980.
Cohler studied clarinet with Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
clarinetists Pasquale Cardillo and Harold Wright
Harold Wright (clarinetist)
Harold Wright was principal clarinetist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1970 to 1993.Wright was born in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and began his clarinet studies at age twelve. He continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia as a student of Ralph McLane of the...
, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
The Berlin Philharmonic, German: , formerly Berliner Philharmonisches Orchester , is an orchestra based in Berlin, Germany. In 2006, a group of ten European media outlets voted the Berlin Philharmonic number three on a list of "top ten European Orchestras", after the Vienna Philharmonic and the...
clarinetist Karl Leister
Karl Leister
Karl Leister is a classical clarinet player from Wilhelmshaven, Germany. At a very young age, he learned to play the clarinet from his father, also a clarinetist, and later studied at the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin...
, clarinet soloist Charles Neidich
Charles Neidich
Charles Neidich is an American classical clarinetist, composer, and conductor.-Early career:A native New Yorker of Russian and Greek descent, Charles Neidich began his clarinet studies with his father, Irving Neidich, at the age of eight, and continued them with the renowned teacher Leon Russianoff...
and Frank Martin.
In 1978, he won a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center
Tanglewood Music Center
The Tanglewood Music Center is an annual summer music academy in Lenox, Massachusetts, United States, in which emerging professional musicians participate in performances, master classes and workshops designed to provide an intense training and networking experience...
. He also held the principal clarinet position of the Colorado Philharmonic Orchestra (now known as the National Repertory Orchestra) in 1979 under conductor Carl Topilow.
Career
Cohler has toured the United States, Europe, South-east Asia and Latin America, and performed at many North American festivals including those of TanglewoodTanglewood Music Festival
The Tanglewood Music Festival is a music festival held every summer on the Tanglewood estate in Lenox, Massachusetts in the Berkshire Hills in western Massachusetts....
, Aspen
Aspen Music Festival and School
The Aspen Music Festival and School, founded in 1949, is an internationally renowned classical music festival that presents music in an intimate, small-town setting...
, Rockport
Rockport Music
Rockport Music is a presenting organization in Rockport, Massachusetts, bringing music, and other artistic programming, in variety of genres to audiences in the greater Boston area and the Massachusetts North Shore. Founded in 1981 as the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Music has been...
, Newport
Newport Music Festival
Newport Music Festival is a classical music festival that takes place in Newport, Rhode Island.It was founded in 1969 as a summer season of the Metropolitan Opera. The outdoor venue was not conducive to classical music performance, and instead the grand rooms of the stately Newport mansions were...
, Martha's Vineyard and the Hamptons. He has performed frequently at the International Clarinet Association
International Clarinet Association
The International Clarinet Association is the main international organization bringing together players of the clarinet. It is based in Lyons, Colorado, United States...
's annual ClarinetFest and has appeared in the Dame Myra Hess
Myra Hess
Dame Myra Hess DBE was a British pianist.She was born in London as Julia Myra Hess, but was best known by her middle name. At the age of five she began to study the piano and two years later entered the Guildhall School of Music, where she graduated as winner of the Gold Medal...
Memorial Concert Series in Chicago. His concerto appearances include Mozart's Clarinet Concerto
Clarinet Concerto (Mozart)
Mozart's Clarinet concerto in A major, K. 622 was written in 1791 for the clarinetist Anton Stadler.It consists of the usual three movements, in a fast–slow–fast form:# Allegro# Adagio# Rondo: Allegro...
with the Santo Andre Orchestra in Brazil and Copland's
Copland
Copland was a project at Apple Computer to create an updated version of the Macintosh operating system. It was to have introduced protected memory, preemptive multitasking and a number of new underlying operating system features, yet still be compatible with existing Mac software...
Clarinet Concerto
Clarinet Concerto (Copland)
Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto was written between 1947 and 1949, although a first version was already available in 1948. This composition is also sometimes referred to as the Concerto for Clarinet, Strings and Harp...
with the Evergreen Orchestra at the National Concert Hall of Taiwan in Taipei.
As a chamber musician Cohler has collaborated with members of the Emerson String Quartet
Emerson String Quartet
The Emerson String Quartet is a New York–based string quartet in residence at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Previously the Quartet was in residence at The Hartt School. Formed in 1976, they have released more than twenty albums and won nine Grammy Awards. Both violinists...
, the Muir String Quartet, the Lark Quartet, the Claremont Trio
Claremont Trio
Claremont Trio is a piano trio composed of Juilliard School alumnae Emily Bruskin , Julia Bruskin , and Donna Kwong . The group was founded at Juilliard in 1999, and made its performance debut at the 92nd Street Y, on the Upper East Side...
, the Moscow Conservatory Trio, the Amadeus Trio, the New Jersey Chamber Music Society, the Boston Chamber Music Society
Boston Chamber Music Society
The Boston Chamber Music Society is an American organization of musicians located in Boston, Massachusetts and dedicated to the performance and promotion of chamber music. The organization performs works from the Baroque era to the present day and is a member of Chamber Music America...
and The Wavehill Trio, and with Boris Berezovsky
Boris Berezovsky (pianist)
- Biography :Berezovsky studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Eliso Virsaladze and privately with Alexander Satz. Following his London début at the Wigmore Hall in 1988, The Times described him as "an artist of exceptional promise, a player of dazzling virtuosity and formidable power."In May 2005...
, Ilya Kaler
Ilya Kaler
Ilya Kaler is a Russian violinist. He was born in Moscow.Kaler is the only violinist to win Gold Medals at these three highly prestigious competitions: the International Tchaikovsky Competition ; the Sibelius ; and the Paganini .- Education :Born into a family of an orchestral musician, Ilya Kaler...
, Andres Diaz
Andrés Díaz (cellist)
Andrés Díaz is cellist and winner the First Prize in the 1986 Naumburg International Cello Competition. His numerous orchestral appearances include engagements with the Atlanta Symphony, performances with the American Symphony at Carnegie Hall, the symphony orchestras of Milwaukee, Seattle,...
, Charles Neidich
Charles Neidich
Charles Neidich is an American classical clarinetist, composer, and conductor.-Early career:A native New Yorker of Russian and Greek descent, Charles Neidich began his clarinet studies with his father, Irving Neidich, at the age of eight, and continued them with the renowned teacher Leon Russianoff...
, Laurence Lesser, Randall Hodgkinson
Randall Hodgkinson
Randall Hodgkinson is an American pianist. He won the International American Music Competition which was sponsored by Carnegie Hall and the Rockefeller Foundation...
, Judith Gordon
Judith Gordon
-Education:Judith Gordon studied at Oberlin Conservatory and at New England Conservatory where she studied with Patricia Zander.-New York debut:Judith Gordon gave her New York recital debut on May 27, 1990 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the museum’s Introductions series. Bernard...
, and Rasa Vitkauskaite.
Cohler's conducting engagements have included Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony
Symphony No. 5 (Shostakovich)
The Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, by Dmitri Shostakovich is a work for orchestra composed between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky...
with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Caracas, Venezuela, and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St...
with the Indian Hill Orchestra (Groton, Massachusetts) and the Granite State Ballet Company in New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, and Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra
Concerto for Orchestra (Bartók)
Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, BB 123, is a five-movement musical work for orchestra composed by Béla Bartók in 1943. It is one of his best-known, most popular and most accessible works. The score is inscribed "15 August – 8 October 1943", and it premiered on December 1, 1944 in Boston Symphony...
with the Texas All-State Symphony Orchestra in San Antonio. For ten years, from 1996 to 2006, he was the Music Director of the Brockton Symphony Orchestra. He is currently the Music Director of the Massachusetts Philharmonic Orchestra.
Cohler has coached groups that have won prizes in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition
Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition
Begun in South Bend, Indiana, USA in 1973, the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition is the largest chamber music competition in the world, and the only with separate Junior and Senior Divisions...
, the Coleman Chamber Music Competition and the Chamber Music Foundation of New England Competition. Groups he has coached have also appeared on the national radio show From the Top
From the Top
From the Top is a national program and initiative to develop and showcase young classical musicians. It is best known for its NPR radio and PBS television programs hosted by pianist Christopher O'Riley, which celebrate the passion, dedication and personal stories of America's best young classical...
.
Cohler has been an adjudicator for international clarinet and music competitions including the 1st European Clarinet Competition, the Young Artist Competition of the International Clarinet Association, and the Canadian National Music Competition.
As of 2011, he is a member of the clarinet, chamber music and conducting faculties of the Longy School of Music
Longy School of Music
The Longy School of Music of Bard College is a conservatory located near Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1915, it was one of the four independent degree-granting music schools in the Boston region along with the New England Conservatory, Berklee College of Music, and Boston...
in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, The Boston Conservatory, and the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he is the Assistant Conductor of the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. He also teaches and coaches through his Advanced Chamber Music Institute in Boston, and ran the International Woodwind Festival summer school in Iowa.
In the early 1990s, Cohler founded the classical music record company Ongaku Records, Inc. As well as publishing Cohler's own recordings of chamber music, it has also released CDs of other instrumentalists, such as Tchaikovsky Competition gold-medal violinist Ilya Kaler
Ilya Kaler
Ilya Kaler is a Russian violinist. He was born in Moscow.Kaler is the only violinist to win Gold Medals at these three highly prestigious competitions: the International Tchaikovsky Competition ; the Sibelius ; and the Paganini .- Education :Born into a family of an orchestral musician, Ilya Kaler...
, Tchaikovsky Competition silver-medal cellist Suren Bagratuni and the pianist Sergey Schepkin.
Discography
- Cohler on Clarinet – Jonathan Cohler (clarinet), Judith Gordon (piano) (1993). Ongaku Records CD 024-101 (listed in The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDsThe Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical MusicThe Penguin Guide To Recorded Classical Music is a widely-distributed annual publication from Britain published by Penguin Books, reviewing and rating currently available recordings of classical music...
Yearbook 2006/7: Best Buys in Classical Music)
- More Cohler on Clarinet – Jonathan Cohler (clarinet), Randall Hodgkinson (piano). (1994). Ongaku Records CD 024-102 (listed in The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs Yearbook 2006/7: Best Buys in Classical Music)
- Brahms Clarinet Sonatas – Jonathan Cohler (clarinet), Judith Gordon (piano), Randall Hodgkinson (piano) (1994). Cover CD, BBC Music MagazineBBC music magazineBBC Music Magazine is a magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom by BBC Worldwide, the commercial subsidiary of the BBC. Reflecting the broadcast output of BBC Radio 3, the magazine is devoted primarily to classical music, though with sections on jazz and world music. Each edition comes...
, October 1994
- Moonflowers, Baby! – Jonathan Cohler (clarinet), Judith Gordon (piano) (1994). Crystal Records CD 733 (MusicWeb International "Recording of the Month", Oct 2010)
- The Clarinet Alone – Jonathan Cohler (clarinet) (1995). Ongaku Records CD 024-105 (nominated for a NAIRDAmerican Association of Independent MusicThe American Association of Independent Music, or A2IM, is a not-for-profit trade organization serving the Independent music community as a unified voice representing a sector that comprises over 30% of the music industry's market share in the United States...
1995 Indie Award in the classical solo category)
- David Alpher: American Reflections – David Alpher (composer and piano), Jonathan Cohler (clarinet), Maureen Gallagher (viola), Robert Honeysucker (baritone), Myron Lutzke (cello), Robert Lynam (string bass), Martha Moor (harp), Jean Newton (harpsichord), Kenneth Radnofsky (tenor saxophone) (1999). Ongaku Records CD 024-112
- Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time – Jonathan Cohler (clarinet), Ilya Kaler (violin), Andrew Mark (cello), Janice Weber (piano) (2004). Ongaku Records CD 024-119
- Rhapsodie Française – Jonathan Cohler (clarinet), Rasa Vitkauskaite (piano) (2008). Ongaku Records CD 024-121
- Jonathan Cohler & Claremont Trio – Jonathan Cohler (clarinet), Claremont Trio (2009). Ongaku Records CD 024-122 (awarded the "Critic's Choice" by BBC Music Magazine)
External links
- Jonathan Cohler official website
- Listen to interview and performance on WGBHWGBHWGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service , and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming...
Radio. Recorded live on January 21, 2009.