Works

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List of Works

The following works are published by Faraway Nearby (ASCAP) and are available for perusal and purchase, unless otherwise indicated. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.

Jump to:
1. Vocal Music
2. Chamber Music (Instrumental)
3. Large Ensemble
4. Multimedia

1. Vocal Music

Seeking repertoire for your choir or vocal ensemble? Check out my programming guide for choral directors.

  • MERCY ON OURSELVES (2025), SATB choir. 5 mins.
  • I WOULD LIKE (2024), SATB choir. 3 mins.
  • PROOFS OF COMING FULLNESS (2024) – Tenor and piano.  4 mins.
  • THE FIRE TOWER (2023) – An opera in one act for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and piano. 24 mins.
  • SAUNTERING SONGS (2023) – Cantata for eight vocal soloists, SATB choir, flute, guitar (electric, acoustic, and classical), piano, and cello. 62 mins. Selections available for standalone performance:
  • THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF SANTA CLAUS (in development) – Opera in one act for soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone, child soprano, SSA choir, and chamber ensemble.
  • TURN AND BURN (2020) – Opera in one act for 2 sopranos, mezzo-soprano, baritone, and bass-baritone, with electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, drum set, 2 violins, viola, cello, and double bass. 71 mins.
  • IT’S A LONG WAY (2020) – SATB choir. 2 ½ mins.
  • WOMAN WALKING (2020/arr. 2022) – Soprano and piano (or mezzo-soprano, piano, and cello). 5 mins.
  • FALLEN STAR (2017, arr. 2020, 2022) – Baritone and piano (available in other transpositions and arrangements). 6 ½ minutes.
  • NEXT RODEO (2020) – Voice and country band. 3 ½ mins.
  • BLUE SHADOWS, SILVER SUNLIGHT (2019) – SATB choir. 9 mins. Selections available for standalone performance:
    • WINTER BRANCHES – SATB choir, 3 mins.
    • A WINTER BLUE JAY – SATB choir, 3 ½ mins.
    • A WINTER RIDE – SATB choir, 2 ½ mins.
  • TRANSFORM THE WORLD WITH BEAUTY (2019) – SATB vocal ensemble. 11 mins. Selections available for standalone performance:
    • MY FIRST CAMERA – SATB choir, 3 ½ mins.
    • IN AN ARTIST’S STUDIO – SSAA choir, 3 mins.
    • TRANSFORM THE WORLD WITH BEAUTY – SATB choir, 4 ½ mins.
  • MABEL’S CALL (2018) – Opera for 2 sopranos, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass-baritone, and SATB chorus, with flute, oboe, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. 90 mins.
  • COME TO THE EDGE (2017/18) – Voice and acoustic guitar. 4 mins. Not available for purchase.
  • COMPOSER-LIBRETTIST STUDIO WORKS (2017) – Songs and scenes for 5 voices and piano. 27 minutes. Not available for purchase.
  • LEAD ON AND UP (2016) – Mezzo-soprano and piano. 5 mins.
  • SORTING PHOTOS (2016) – Soprano and piano. 5 mins.
  • WHAT IF? (2015) – Bass-baritone and piano. 3 mins.
  • BURY ME (2015) – Baritone and piano. 4 mins.
  • DEAR MRS. CARR (2015) – Tenor and piano. 5 mins.
  • THE COMING OF SPRING (2014) – Monodrama for tenor with flute/piccolo, oboe/English horn, clarinet/bass clarinet, horn, bassoon, and piano. 36 mins.
  • CRESCENT MEADOW (2014) – SATB choir. 4 ½ mins.
  • I LIKE TO PLAY WITH HIM (2011) – Soprano and piano. 4 mins.
  • I DREAM’D IN A DREAM (2011) – SATB choir or vocal ensemble. 11 mins. Not available for purchase.
  • TO CREATE ONE’S OWN WORLD (2009) – Soprano, flute, bass clarinet, and marimba. 5 ½ mins. Not available for purchase.
  • REVEALED IN STONE (2009) – Tenor and piano. 11 mins.
    Arrangement for tenor and flute (alto flute), oboe (English horn), clarinet (bass clarinet), horn, bassoon, percussion, 2 violins, viola, cello, bass. 11 mins.
  • SONGS FOR BARITONE (2008) – Baritone and piano.  7 mins. Selection available for standalone performance:
  • FORMING DESIRES (2008) – Mezzo-soprano, clarinet, horn, and cello. 8 mins.
  • MEMORY (2007) – Soprano, alto, tenor bass. 12 ½ mins. Not available for purchase.

2. Chamber Music (Instrumental)

  • LAMENT FOR THE LAND (2023) – Flute, violin, and cello. 4 minutes.
  • SUNBEAMS (2023) – Flute, violin, and cello. 2 ½ minutes.
  • BREATH OF THE MEADOW, HEART OF THE WOODLAND (2021) – Flute, clarinet, horn, percussion, violin, viola, and cello. 5 ½ minutes.
  • SYMBIOSIS (2021) – Harp. 9 minutes. Published by Presser (forthcoming). Not yet available for purchase.
  • SPIRAL TEMPLE (2021) – 2 trumpets, horn, tenor trombone, bass trombone, and tuba. 8 mins.
  • TRANSFORMING FOREST (2018) – Violin, cello, and piano. 12 ½ mins.
  • RETRACE (2018) – Flute, violin, and cello. 7 ½ mins.
  • WALKS AT BRUSH CREEK (2017) – Piano. 9 mins.
  • REFUGE (2016) – Flute (piccolo), percussion, violin, and cello. 16 ½ mins. Selection available for standalone performance:
  • WANDERLUST (2015) – Guitar quartet. 13 ½ mins.
  • DAI-SHIZEN (GREAT NATURE) (2014) – Flute and guitar. 10 ½ mins.
  • CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR (2014) – Video with music for piccolo, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello, and bass. 8 mins.
  • THE WINDING PATH (2013) – String quartet. 7 mins.
  • HORIZON (2013) – Cello. 7 1/2 mins.
  • THREE DECORATIONS (2013) – Percussion trio. 5 mins.
  • SEXTET (2012) – Oboe, bassoon, trumpet, harpsichord, violin, and viola. 8 ½ mins.
  • SAN MARCO (2012) – Trumpet with digital samples and live processing. 3 mins. Not available for purchase.
  • PLACES IN THE BAY AREA (2012/13) – Flute (piccolo) and piano (2012). 8 mins.
  • SETSUGEKKA (2011) – Violin and piano. 5 ½ mins.
  • WATERCOLORS (2011) – Flute (piccolo), oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn. 15 mins.
  • TRIPTYCH (2011) – Guitar. 7 mins.
  • INTO NOWHERE (2010) – Flute, clarinet, piano, violin, and cello. 19 mins.
  • TREES (2009/10) – Four C flutes, alto flute, and bass flute. 7 mins.
    Arrangement for two oboes and harpsichord. 7 mins. Not available for purchase.
  • DUET (2009) – Flute and bassoon. 7 ½ mins.
  • NINE MUSES (2009) – Miniatures for solo flute, violin, and harp. 13 ½ minutes.
  • THE COURSE OF EMPIRE (2008) – String quartet. 15 mins.
  • THE PROMISE (2008) – Trumpet, 2 violins, viola, and cello. 11 mins. Not available for purchase.
  • TIME-LAPSE (2007) – English horn, clarinet, viola, and cello. 4 mins. Not available for purchase.

3. Large Ensemble

  • POINT REYES FROM CHIMNEY ROCK (2014) – Orchestra (piccolo, flute, 2 oboes, clarinet in Bb, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, 3 percussion, harp, strings). 7 mins.
  • SYMPHONY NO. 1 (2012) – Orchestra (piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets in Bb, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings). 17 ½ mins.
  • THE SPHINX AND THE MILKY WAY (2011) – Orchestra. 5 mins.
  • FANTASY FOR WINDS (2010) – Wind ensemble (piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet in Bb, bass clarinet, 2 bassoon, 4 horn, 2 trumpet, 3 trombone, tuba, timpani, 3 percussion, piano). 6 mins. Not available for purchase.
  • FROM THE FARAWAY NEARBY (2009) – Orchestra (piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet in Bb, bass clarinet, bassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings). 6 mins.

4. Multimedia

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Mercy On Ourselves (2025)

SATB Choir. 5 mins.

Commissioned by Emmanuel Music.

Perusal Score

View perusal score.

Score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.

Program Note

J.S. Bach’s cantata Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgend ein Schmerz sei (BWV 46) finds the composer and his anonymous librettist exploring the biblical premise that humankind invites destruction upon itself through its misdeeds. This cantata gives voice to sorrow experienced in the wake of widespread devastation, and urges humanity to seek divine mercy or suffer God’s wrath—so powerfully evoked here in Bach’s depictions of extreme weather, particularly in the stormy bass aria.

Viewing Bach’s cantata through a contemporary lens, I am struck by its parallels to today’s climate crisis. Scientists have reported that 2024 was the warmest year on record, and the first year in which the global temperature has exceeded 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level (per the European Union’s Copernicus Programme). The large-scale degradation of our environment, and the violent processes of climate change that result, such as extreme weather, are the very real and present manifestation of humankind in the process of sowing its own destruction.

In this motet commissioned by Emmanuel Music, I seek to offer a musical meditation on the climate crisis that takes its cues from Bach’s moving evocations of human sorrow and divine wrath. Inspired by the overarching emotional and musical shape of Bach’s cantata—characterized by intense contrasts highlighted in the opening lamentation and wrathful fugue, the storm bass aria, and the closing chorale—my piece is structured into three brief, contrasting sections.

The opening stanza of my lyrics, built from paraphrases of Bach’s opening passage from Lamentations, expresses the sorrow that many of us feel; and in particular, the paradox of experiencing collective suffering as a personal grief within our individual, isolated lives. Emphasis and repetition on the word “sorrow” pays tribute to Bach’s mesmerizing treatment of the German Schmerz. 

The work’s contrapuntal middle section evokes the destructive powers of our climate out-of-balance, recounting natural forces and extreme weather events that Earth has experienced with increasing frequency and intensity in the recent past.

The final section takes the form of a heartfelt prayer for mercy. In my work, this prayer is directed not to the divine but instead towards human civilization itself: a plea to the collective to change our course, to have mercy on ourselves by using the tools and knowledge that our global society has within its grasp to reform our relationship to the planet.

Text

Be there sorrow like my sorrow?
(Grief for the past)
Is your sorrow like my sorrow?
(Grief for the present)
Is this sorrow all our sorrow?
(Grief for the future—
My, your, our future)

Wind, water, air, and land
Heat, fire, ice, and snow
We are at their mercy
Cyclone, hurricane, flooding, freeze
Landslide, wildfire, hunger, drought
We are at their mercy
Please show us mercy

We must show mercy
To mend our sorrow
We know what we need
But will it be done?
(Wind, water, air, and land
Heat, fire, ice, and snow)

We must show mercy
To mend our planet
We know that we could
But will it be done?
(Cyclone, hurricane, flooding, freeze
Landslide, wildfire, hunger, drought)

We know what we need
We know it could be done
We must show mercy
Please, we must show mercy on ourselves
And will it to be done

“Mercy On Ourselves” Copyright © 2024 Nell Shaw Cohen.

Performance History

Emmanuel Music (Ryan Turner, Director), Emmanuel Church, Boston, MA, 3/16/25.

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I Would Like (2024)

SATB Choir. 3 mins.

Commissioned by the Arkansas State University Concert Choir.

Text by Kathryn I. W. Sparks.

Perusal Score

View perusal score.

Score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.

Program Note

I Would Like was commissioned by the Arkansas State University Concert Choir for inclusion on a program of choral works by women. Director Ryan W. Sullivan invited me to set a poem by Kathryn I. W. Sparks in which the speaker paints a vision of the contentment they wish to feel at the end of their life. I sought to honor the emotional nuances of this re􀀰ective text through moments of madrigal-esque word painting and the gentle tension of harmonic suspensions.

Text

I would like to die at evening
just as dusk darkens to blue
as the birds chant evensong and
meadow mist falls into dew

distant bells change-ring by lamplight
petals drop from heated blooms
while the hum of peaceful breathing
flows at ease through quiet rooms

I would like to die at evening
as the city goes to sleep
leaf and flowers’ perfumes lie down
in their moonlit beds to sleep

rise up as all else is settling
one last loving touch to wear
having feasted through my lifetime
then I’ll dissipate to air

Poem “I Would Like” Copyright © 2024 Kathryn I. W. Sparks. Used with permission from the author.

Performance History

Arkansas State University Concert Choir (Ryan W. Sullivan, Director), Music by Women Festival, Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, MS, 3/6/25.

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Laws for Creations (2008/Arr. 2024)

Tenor and piano. 3 1/2 mins.

Text by Walt Whitman.

Perusal Score

View perusal score.

Score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.

Program Note

“Presented here in a new version for tenor, Laws for Creations is one of my earliest compositions for classical voice: an art song originally written in 2008 for baritone. I was compelled by Walt Whitman’s treatment of the themes of creativity and self-determination, and sought to respond to the spirit of his poetry in my musical setting.”

Text

Laws for Creations,
For strong artists and leaders—for fresh broods of
teachers, and perfect literats for America,
For noble savans, and coming musicians.

All must have reference to the ensemble of the world,
and the compact truth of the world;
There shall be no subject too pronounced—All works
shall illustrate the divine law of indirections.

What do you suppose Creation is?
What do you suppose will satisfy the Soul, except to
walk free, and own no superior?
What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hun-
dred ways, but that man or woman is as good as
God?
And that there is no God any more divine than Your-
self?
And that that is what the oldest and newest myths
finally mean?
And that you or any one must approach Creations
through such laws?

“Laws for Creations” by Walt Whitman from “Leaves of Grass” (1871 edition).

Performance History

Burchfield Penney Art Center,  Buffalo Opera Unlimited (Alexander Kosmowski, tenor and Matthew Marco, piano), Buffalo, NY, 8/4/24.

For performance history of baritone version, see Songs for Baritone.

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Proofs of Coming Fullness (2024)

Tenor and piano. 4 mins.

Text by Walt Whitman.

Perusal Score

View perusal score.

Score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.

Program Note

“In his 1882 autobiography Specimen Days, Walt Whitman penned a series of vividly observed miniature prose pieces documenting his impressions of the natural world. Excerpted from an entry dated April 6, the text of Proofs of Coming Fullness describes an early spring morning in which Whitman observes signs of seasonal change. This song was composed as a complementary work to my operatic monodrama The Coming of Spring— which also highlights the phenomena of early spring, as depicted in the art and journals of Charles E. Burchfield —and for World Premiere in conjuction with the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s exhibit Embracing Earth: Burch􏰄eld & Whitman.”

Text

“I am sitting in bright sunshine, at the edge of the creek, the surface just rippled by the wind. All is solitude, morning freshness, negligence. […] Then a poor little dead leaf, long frost-bound, whirls from somewhere up aloft in one wild escaped freedom-spree in space and sunlight, and then dashes down to the waters, which hold it closely and soon drown it out of sight. The bushes and trees are yet bare, but the beeches have their wrinkled yellow leaves of last season’s foliage largely left, frequent cedars and pines yet green, and the grass not without proofs of coming fullness. And over all a wonderfully fine dome of clear blue, the play of light coming and going, and great fleeces of white clouds swimming so silently.”

From “Specimen Days” (1882) by Walt Whitman.

Performance History

Burchfield Penney Art Center,  Buffalo Opera Unlimited (Joe Dan Harper, tenor and Matthew Marco, piano), Buffalo, NY, 8/4/24.

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The Open Road (2023/Arr. 2024)

Tenor and piano. 3 mins.

A selection from Sauntering Songs: a concert-length cantata on the theme of walking, commissioned by Skylark Vocal Ensemble.

Text by Walt Whitman.

Perusal Score

View perusal score.

Score available for purchase. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.

Program Note

“The Open Road” is a selection from Sauntering Songs: a concert-length cantata on the theme of walking, commissioned by Skylark Vocal Ensemble. This selection, which forms the opening number of the work, sets excerpts from Walt Whitman’s invigorating “Poem of The Road.” Originally scored for SATB choir with an instrumental quartet of flute, piano, electric guitar, and cello, the song is presented here in a reduced arrangement for solo tenor and piano.

Text

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road!
Healthy, free, the world before me!
The long brown path before me, leading wherever
I choose!

The earth expanding right hand and left hand, the picture alive, every part in its best light, the music falling in where it is wanted, and
stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road—the gay
fresh sentiment of the road.

From this hour, I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines!
Going where I list—my own master, total and absolute,

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road!
Healthy, free, the world before me!
The long brown path before me, leading wherever
I choose!

The cheerful voice of the public road—the gay fresh sentiment of the road.

The open road!

Excerpt from “Poem of The Road” by Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass (1856 edition).

Performance History

Burchfield Penney Art Center,  Buffalo Opera Unlimited (Joe Dan Harper, tenor and Matthew Marco, piano), Buffalo, NY, 8/4/24.

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The Fire Tower (2023)

An opera in one act for soprano, mezzo-soprano, and piano. 24 mins.

Black & white photograph of a fire tower on a mountain summit

Two intrepid women develop a bond of friendship during a trek deep into the wilderness. June, a first-time fire lookout, is radically reinventing herself following the unexpected death of her life partner. Ray is an experienced mule packer with a life-long love for the land, who struggles with hopelessness in the face of ecological crises.

Accompanied by pack mules, Ray guides June to her seasonal post at a rustic fire tower on a mountain summit in a non-motorized wilderness. During their journey the women are awed by vast landscapes, find moments of levity, and share their experiences with grief.

Set against a backdrop of climate crisis in the American West, The Fire Tower is an intimate portrait of two people in a pivotal moment searching for purpose.

Music & libretto by Nell Shaw Cohen.

Perusal Score

Available for workshop productions. Perusal score provided on request. Please direct inquiries to Nell Shaw Cohen at nell@nellshawcohen.com.

Performance & Development History


UTSA Lyric Theatre presented a workshop performance of The Fire Tower directed by Jourdan Laine Howell at The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, 11/17 & 11/19/23.