"A brilliant performance ... eloquently played ... close to the essence of chamber music." [J. Reilly Lewis, John Moran and Jeffrey Cohan] Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post, June 26, 2000

"A virtuoso at conveying myriad colors" ... "The audience clearly was entranced ... flutist Jeffrey Cohan captivated young and old.” Cecelia Porter, The Washington Post, July 14, 2001

"Baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan and harpsichordist George Shangrow give new meaning to the intimacy implicit in the genre of chamber music... They have forged not only an exquisitely subtle collaboration but also a common scholarly interpretation of how Bach would have had the music performed.

"They responded intuitively to each other's rhythmic elasticity and echoed each other's elaborate ornamentations with what sounded like spontaneous inspiration... Almost as impressive was the silent attentiveness that their musicmaking commanded.

"Bach may have been composing for a soft instrument with a very limited dynamic range, but the music he produced was exuberant, joyous and lyrical. It was these qualities that Cohan and Shangrow communicated..." Joan Reinthaler, The Washington Post, July 16, 2002

Praise for CHCMF

For Frederick the Great, a Concert of the Same Quality WASHINGTON POST Monday, July 2012
The second of two concerts in this year’s Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival, held at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church Sunday night, was devoted to music from the Prussian court of Frederick the Great. The theme is a timely one since Germany celebrates this year the 300th birthday of the Prussian king who, besides being a brilliant military strategist, was also a passionate musician. Fittingly, the festival’s artistic director, Jeffrey Cohan, played a baroque flute that is a replica of an instrument made for Frederick by his teacher, Johann Joachim Quantz, now in the collections of the Library of Congress.
Cohan is a wonderful player who exploits all the richly expressive potential of the baroque wooden flute with ease and subtlety. With his partners, harpsichordist Joseph Gascho and cellist Gozde Yasar, Cohan played sonatas by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Georg Benda and Quantz — all musicians employed by Frederick’s at his Potsdam palace, Sanssouci — as well as a sonata by the monarch himself.
Late in his life, Johann Sebastian Bach visited Emanuel, the most famous of his several composer sons, in Potsdam. “Old Bach” was given a warm welcome at court, and Frederick asked Bach if he could improvise on a theme he had composed. Bach complied, evidently to the king’s satisfaction. But later, Bach used Frederick’s theme as the basis for one of his late masterpieces, “The Musical Offering.” Selections from this sublime work, along with a Bach violin sonata adapted for flute, were the culmination of a thoughtfully conceived and most enjoyable evening. -- Patrick Rucker


At St. Mark's,Good Things Come in Trios
WASHINGTON POST Thursday, July 2, 2009
It's probably fanciful imagining a large audience turning up to hear obscure chamber music at the height of summer vacation season. But the mere 29 heads I counted at St. Mark's Episcopal Church for Tuesday's Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival recital seemed an especially pathetic showing for such a stylishly played evening. St. Mark's, one of Washington's more strikingly beautiful and acoustically friendly churches, added just the right bloom to the gentle buzz of the festival's period instruments. Tuesday's program -- commemorating the 200th anniversary of the deaths of Haydn and his little-known contemporary, Carl Wilhelm Glösch, and the 250th birthday of François Devienne -- was predictable for a festival whose artistic director, Jeffrey Cohan, is a specialist in baroque and classical flute: All five pieces played were 18th-century trios for flute, violin and cello. If such flute, flute and more flute programming produced an inevitable sameness of tone, these lesser trios by the great Haydn, and great trios by the lesser Glösch, Devienne and their contemporary Franz Anton Hoffmeister met in a middle ground of high competence (the dark-hued Devienne D Minor Trio marginally more memorable than the other scores), and all were played with lived-in ease and affection. -- Joe Banno

     RISA BROWDER’s interest in historical performance on violin, viola and viola d’amore ranges from the seventeenth century to the romantic era.  After graduating from Oberlin Conservatory and completing graduate studies at the Royal College of Music in London, and the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Ms. Browder began her professional career in Europe with Academy of Ancient Music, English Concert, Les Musiciens du Louvre, Purcell Quartet, and London Baroque among others.  She has performed as soloist with the Folger Consort, Washington Bach Consort (concertmaster), Capriole, Boston Bach, Smithsonian Chamber Players, and REBEL.  Ms. Browder is co-director of Modern Musick, a period instrument chamber orchestra which debuted in 2001 to high acclaim in Washington, DC.  Recording credits include Dorian, Chandos, Deutsche Grammophon, Virgin Classics, and EMI.  She also enjoys teaching and is on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory where she teaches baroque violin and viola and together with her husband, John Moran, directs the Baltimore Baroque Band.
     CARRIE KRAUSE, baroque violinist, resides as concertmaster of the Bozeman Symphony (MT) and New Trinity Baroque. She performs regularly as soloist and ensemble member for ensembles throughout the United States, including Apollo's Fire (Cleveland), Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Pacific Baroque, the San Francisco Bach Choir, Chatham Baroque, New York State Baroque, Portland Baroque, Passamezzo Moderno, Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, Clarion, American Classical Orchestra, and Concert Royale in New York. Festival Engagements include the Leipzig Bach Festival as soloist, the Belgrade Early Music Festival in Serbia, Sastamalla Gregoriana in Finland, the Utrecht Early Music Festival, Festival dans les Jardins with William Christie, and the BBC Proms. Carrie has worked under such conductors as Jordi Savall, Ton Koopman, Richard Egarr, Nic McGegan, and Masaaki Suzuki. Carrie received degrees from Carnegie Mellon under Andres Cardenes and a masters degree from the Cleveland Institute of music in violin performance and Suzuki Pedagogy, and recently graduated with a second masters from the Juilliard School in Historical Performance. She resides in Bozeman, MT, where she performs with the Meritage String Quartet and teaches a studio of 35 students. An avid adventurer, Carrie placed first in her age group in the Springfield Missouri Marathon and second in her age group in the Old Gabe 50k Trail race.
    DONGSOK SHIN, harpsichordist, was born in Boston and played the modern piano from the age of four. Since the early 1980's, he has specialized exclusively on harpsichord, organ, and fortepiano. A member of the internationally acclaimed baroque ensemble REBEL since 1997 and a regular performer at the Carmel Bach Festival, Mr. Shin has appeared with the American Classical Orchestra, ARTEK, Concert Royal, Early Music New York, Carmel Bach Festival, Mark Morris Dance Group, the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He has toured throughout North America, Europe, and Mexico, has been heard on numerous radio broadcasts nationally and internationally, and has recorded for ATMA Classique, Bridge Records, Dorian/Sono Luminus, Hänssler Classic, Helicon, Lyrichord, and Newport Classic. He was a founding member of the Mannes Camerata, receiving international critical acclaim as music director for their productions of early baroque operas, and he was a member, as well as a guest director of NYS Baroque in Ithaca, NY. In his spare time, he tunes, maintains and demonstrates antique keyboards at the Metropolitan Museum and for the Metropolitan Opera, and is well known as a recording engineer, producer and editor of numerous early music recordings. He is married to early keyboard player and director of ARTEK, Gwendolyn Toth, and they are the proud parents of three children.
    WILLIAM SIMMS, lute, theorbo & guitar, is an active performer of early music performing on guitar, lute and theorbo. He appears appears regularly with the Bach Sinfonia and performs with Apollo's Fire, Harmonious Blacksmith, Olde Friends Concert Artists and the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado. He has performed numerous operas, canatatas and oratorios with such ensembles as Cleveland Opera, the Baltimore Consort, Opera Lafayette, Opera Vivente, American Opera Theatre and the Washington National Opera. Venues include The National Cathedral, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Library of Congress, The Corcoran Gallery, Wolftrap and The Kennedy Center. This past summer Simms performed in Handel's Alcina at Wolftrap. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from the College of Wooster and a Master of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory and serves on the faculties of Towson University, Mt. St. Mary's University, Interlochen Arts Camp as well as Hood College, where he is founder and director of the Hood College Early Music Ensemble. He has recorded for the Dorian, Centaur and Eclectra labels.
    MARLISA DEL CID WOODS is highly acclaimed as a solo artist, chamber musician, and orchestral violinist. She joined Pershing’s Own United States Army Orchestra in 2000 upon completion of her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her versatility in different styles has been featured in many of the world’s leading venues - from Bluegrass at the White House to Brahms Double Concerto at the Kennedy Center. Ms. Woods has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Concert Artists of Baltimore, Alexandria Symphony, National Gallery Orchestra, Canton Symphony, Youngstown Symphony, and the Erie Philharmonic. As a baroque violinist, she has performed with Washington Bach Consort, National Cathedral Baroque Orchestra, Bach Sinfonia, Apollo’s Fire, Opera Lafayette, Harmonious Blacksmith, and the Vivaldi Project. Ms. Woods can be heard on the Eclectra , Lyrichord, and Dorian labels. Her most recent recording with the Bach Sinfonia and acclaimed lutenist Ronn McFarlane was selected as CD pick of the week by WETA 90.9FM radio.
     Artistic Director and flutist JEFFREY COHAN has performed as soloist in 25 countries, most recently Ukraine, Slovenia and Germany, on all transverse flutes from the Renaissance through the present, and has won the Erwin Bodky Award (Boston) and the top prize in the Flanders Festival International Concours Musica Antiqua (Brugge, Belgium), two of the most important prizes for period instrument performance in America and Europe. He has premiered many concerti and other works by Slovenian and American composers. He also directs the Black Hawk Chamber Music Festival in Illinois and Iowa and the Salish Sea Early Music Festival. He can “play many superstar flutists one might name under the table” according to the New York Times, and is “The Flute Master” according to the Boston Globe.