Composer | Librettist | Artist
Selection from Sauntering Songs: a concert-length cantata on the theme of walking, commissioned by Skylark Vocal Ensemble.
Performance score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.
NEW! Seeking repertoire for your choir or vocal ensemble? Check out my programming guide for choral directors.
Selection from Sauntering Songs: a concert-length cantata on the theme of walking, commissioned by Skylark Vocal Ensemble.
Lyrics by Nell Shaw Cohen.
Performance score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.
NEW! Seeking repertoire for your choir or vocal ensemble? Check out my programming guide for choral directors.
Commissioned by Skylark Vocal Ensemble.
Read the liner notes with essays and lyrics.
Skylark Vocal Ensemble’s World Premiere live recording of Sauntering Songs (paired with Transform the World with Beauty) is available NOW on all major streaming music platforms (including Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Pandora, and Tidal). The physical CD is available for purchase from Skylark. Read the liner notes with essays and lyrics.
Watch the trailer:
A love letter to wanderlust, Sauntering Songs weaves together art songs, choral music, and literature into an expansive cantata on the theme of walking.
Influences from rock, folk, and musical theater shine in a lyrical and evocative score by composer/librettist Nell Shaw Cohen, marrying the voices of three-time GRAMMY®-nominee Skylark with an instrumental quartet comprised of guitarist James Moore and musicians from Juventas New Music Ensemble.
From Walt Whitman to the present day, Sauntering Songs celebrates diverse characters who search for freedom and fulfillment through subversive journeys on foot.
Perusal score available on request. Performance score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.
Selections available for standalone performance (click titles for details and perusal scores):
Music & Libretto by Nell Shaw Cohen
With texts by John Clare, Megan Cohen, Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, John Francis, John Muir, Nan Shepherd, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf
Dramaturg: Megan Cohen (Website)
Sensitivity Consultant for song “Best Friend”: Laura Elliott (Twitter)
Sensitivity Consultant for song “Rare Bird”: Dr. Kassandra Ford (Website)
Skylark Vocal Ensemble (Matthew Guard, Artistic Director), Juventas New Music Ensemble, and James Moore, guitar; Falmouth Academy, Falmouth, MA, 4/20/23.
Skylark Vocal Ensemble (Matthew Guard, Artistic Director), Juventas New Music Ensemble, and James Moore, guitar; Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, MA, 4/21/23
Skylark Vocal Ensemble (Matthew Guard, Artistic Director), Juventas New Music Ensemble, and James Moore, guitar; St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Newburyport, MA, 4/22/23.
Commissioned by American Wild Ensemble, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Landscape Music, and Michigan Technological University Department of Visual and Performing Arts to commemorate the 2022 bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted.
Performance score and parts available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.
Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted described urban parks as “the lungs of the city.” My music responds to Olmsted & Calvert Vaux’s expression of this metaphor through the iconic meadows and woodlands of New York City’s Prospect Park (1867) and Central Park (1858).
A lyrical theme, accompanied by sustained chords held against the flow of undulating triplets, opens and closes the piece. This music evokes the parks’ meadows, where the human body and the body of the landscape are connected through shared “breath.” Stepping off a busy sidewalk into these wide open spaces, the sensation of my lungs filling with fresh air feels like the echo of a gentle breeze blowing through treetops and grasses.
A middle section of syncopated rhythms and sinuous counterpoint recalls the parks’ winding woodland interiors, which reflect the “heart” of both visitor and landscape. These woodlands are spaces for contemplation and intimate conversation, where dense forest gives cover to an enigmatic network of footpaths.
Even as I cherish these two parks, I find their present-day terrain obfuscates a complex history. Seneca Village (1825-1857) was a vibrant Black community, which New York City’s government forcibly vacated in order to build Central Park. Both parks continue to occupy Lenapehoking: the unceded homeland of the Lenape.
The concept of parks as “lungs” may have come from Olmsted’s work in public health during the Civil War. Yet this idea feels strikingly poignant in our own time of pandemic and climate crisis, and has given inspiration and impetus to my music.
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Lyrics by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen.
Arrangement for large ensemble included in Sauntering Songs: a concert-length cantata on the theme of walking, commissioned by Skylark Vocal Ensemble.
View perusal score (baritone and piano version).
Performance score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.
Version for solo voice and piano also available as part of NewMusicShelf Anthology of New Music: Trans & Nonbinary Voices, Vol. 1. May be transposed to any key.
The first version of Fallen Star was written in 2017 during the New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, an intensive laboratory for music-theater collaborations directed by Nautilus Music-Theater.
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen and I created Fallen Star in response to a prompt from baritone Joshua Hinck to write a song with themes from Classical mythology. In doing so, Deen also incorporated our shared love of the American West, and the transcendent night skies of Northern New Mexico, into his brilliant lyric.
Fallen Star was later arranged and incorporated into Sauntering Songs: a concert-length cantata on the theme of walking, commissioned by Skylark Vocal Ensemble.
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Performance History
Voice and piano version:
Nashua Pride Festival, Melina Jaharis, mezzo-soprano. Nashua Community Music School, Nashua, NH, 6/25/22.
New Dramatists, version for three voices presented as part of music-theater workshop. Blake Friedman, Nicole Mitchell, and Camille Harris, vocalists, with Charity Wicks, piano. New York NY, 4/19/18.
New Dramatists, version for three voices presented as part of public working session at culmination of the New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio. Joshua Hinck, Mallory Hawks, and Lucia Rodrique, vocalists, with Roger Ames, piano. New York NY, 02/03/17.
Large ensemble version:
Visit the Sauntering Songs page for performance history.
Live recording by Boston Choral Ensemble (Klo Garoute, Conductor):
Commissioned by Boston Choral Ensemble.
Any of the three movements may be programmed separately as standalone works for performance.
Performance score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.
NEW! Seeking repertoire for your choir or vocal ensemble? Check out my programming guide for choral directors.