Music

Multifaceted American jazz pianist and composer Emmet Cohen is in the vanguard of his generation's advancement of music and the related arts. A recognized prodigy, Cohen started playing the piano at 3 years old. Fresh off from receiving the 2019 American Pianists Award and being named the Cole Porter Fellowship winner, Frost Studio Music and Jazz alumnus Emmet Cohen returns to the Studio Jazz Band to present original music and new arrangements of standards. Cohen already has several albums under his own name and has performed with masters such as Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Jimmy Cobb, and Jimmy Heath.

Join us as we celebrate the stellar career and retirement of Frost’s director of Studio Jazz Writing and Jazz Composition Gary Lindsay, featuring Frost Concert Jazz Band plus strings with various special guests.

Take pleasure in a repertoire showcasing the integration of the instrumentalists and vocalists within each group through arrangements by Frost alumni Greg Jasperse, Jeremy Fox, Jennifer Barnes, and Kate Reid.

What ensues when three opera singers compete in a call to audition for Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario)? You'll find out in this opera play with dialogue and music which Mozart himself wrote for an opera competition in 1786!

The Frost Cello Ensemble performs two great cello octets by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1 and No. 5, written for voice and eight cellos, featuring Frost faculty soprano, Jeanette Thompson. This program also includes the world premiere of a new work for large cello ensemble.

The newly-formed Bergonzi Piano Trio celebrates Beethoven’s 250th birthday year by performing the monumental Piano Trio, Op. 97, known as “The Archduke Trio,” and Piano Trio, Op. 70, No.1. The program also features the world premiere of a trio by Scott Flavin based on themes from Beethoven’s piano, violin, and cello repertoire.

Tokyo born composer Miho Hazama is one of New York’s most astounding young talents. Lauded in Downbeat as one of “25 for the Future,” Miho is quickly establishing herself as a force of nature on the world’s stage. She has written for orchestras such as the Tokyo Philharmonic, and also arranged and orchestrated for the Metropole Orkest, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Vince Mendoza, and NHK Symphony Orchestra, among others. Hazama’s debut release, Journey to Journey (2012), received the Jazz JAPAN rising star award. She has three albums under her own name.

A concert showcasing the music of John Mackey, one of today’s most prolific and engaging composers. His latest piece, Places We Can No Longer Go, features guest soprano Lindsay Kesselman, an “artist of growing reputation for her artistry and intelligence…with a voice of goddess-like splendor” (Fanfare Magazine).

Frost voice faculty artists Jeanette Thompson and Robynne Redmon sing in a voice recital honoring the history and evolution of the Spiritual. Thompson has been lauded throughout the world as a singer with great depth, warmth, beauty, style and heart. Noted composers David Winkler, Craig Bohmler, Steven Sametz, Ricky Ian Gordon and Thomas Cipullo have written works expressly for her. Redmon has been hailed the world over for her "glorious singing, intense acting, excellent phrasing, ardent tone, splendid shading, solid coloratura and excellent artistic sense." (Das Opernglas) A product of the introduction of Christianity into slaves’s lives, Spirituals also became a coded means of communicating resistance and escape. In time, Spirituals became a formative piece in the development of jazz and blues and has remained a source of inspiration to many jazz artists today.

The pairing of guitar and flute has long inspired delightful music, at once earthy and delicately translucid. Treat yourself to an evening featuring Robert Beaser’s Mountain Songs, based on Appalachian music; Astor Piazzolla’s Histoire Du Tango, a tango lesson in four movements; Carlos Rafael Rivera’s Raven Dance, which draws on Balkan music, and much more.