BRATTLEBORO — On Sunday, Nov. 1, at 4 p.m., at Centre Congregational Church, the Brattleboro Music Center presents Music School faculty member and cellist Paul Cohen, and guest pianist Michael Arnowitt.
The concert program includes Bach's Suite for Violoncello Solo in C Major BWV 1009; Brahms' Sonata for Piano and Cello in E Minor Op. 38; Beethoven's Sonata for Cello and Piano Op. 102, No. 2; and three solo piano pieces by Brahms.
Cohen studied cello with Fritz Magg and Janos Starker at Indiana University and began his professional career with the Atlanta Chamber Players in 1982. During the next four years, he performed in numerous concerts throughout the Southeast, as well as playing debut concerts in Boston and New York. In 1986, he joined the Apple Hill Chamber Players in New Hampshire.
After moving to Los Angeles in 1996, Cohen performed with ensembles such as Camerata Pacifica, Pacific Serenades, and the Dunsmuir Quartet. He became a founding member of the New Hollywood String Quartet and appeared with them at numerous festivals including the Sedona Music Festival, Vermont Music Festival, Ventura Chamber Music Festival, and the 20th Century Festival in Santa Fe.
He has also appeared on more than 150 film scores, including Academy-Award- and Golden-Globe-winning scores by John Williams, Michael Nyman, and James Horner. He received the C.D. Jackson Master Award from the Tanglewood Music Center and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.
As a teacher, Cohen has led a class of cellists at Amherst College, and has been an artist-in-residence at Emory University in Atlanta, and at Keene State College in New Hampshire. Cohen has taught at the Brattleboro Music Center since 2014.
Arnowitt is best known for the “beauty, clarity and elegance of his musical ideas, for his ability to find new articulations and colors from the piano, for his talents in constructing innovative and thought-provoking programs, and for his natural and warm on-stage manner with audiences of all ages,” according to a news release.
His life and music are the subjects of an award-winning documentary by the American filmmaker Susan Bettmann, Beyond Eighty-Eight Keys (2004). The film contains performance excerpts of music by Bach, Mozart, Byrd, Schumann, Brahms, Schoenberg, and Ligeti.
Arnowitt is also an active jazz pianist. His recording Classical/Jazz, on the Musical Heritage Society label, was a unique program of jazz-influenced classical music and classically-influenced jazz, exploring the mutual influence of the two fields of music throughout the 20th century.