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The Raritan Valley Community College (RVCC) Arts & Design department will present its next selection in a virtual concert series launched to help defray the cost of private instructional lessons for RVCC music majors. The virtual concert, “Jewish Legacy XX: A Musical Project by Paul Cohen & Anna Keiserman,” will be streamed live from RVCC’s Edward Nash Theatre on Sunday, February 14, 2 p.m.

To watch the Jewish Legacy concert performance, visit https://www.facebook.com/RVCCMusic.

The Jewish Legacy XX project will feature Jewish music from the 20th and 21st Centuries, including the Nazi-banned, so-called “degenerate” music of Jewish composer E. Schulhoff, who died in the concentration camps, and music of the Jewish avant-garde movement, created by A. Krein and Leo Ornstein at the beginning of the 20th Century. This new music genre blended traditional Jewish folk and liturgical music with western European and Russian romantic styles. The program also will include music by Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim and New York City composer Steve Cohen.

The concert is part of the department’s MOZAIKA Concert Series, created to promote multicultural dialogue through the performance of music from the classical canon through the 21st Century.

Saxophonist Paul Cohen has appeared as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, Richmond Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Charleston Symphony and Philharmonia Virtuosi. His solo orchestra performances include works by Debussy, Creston, Ibert, Glazunov, Martin, Loeffler, Tomasi, and others. He also has performed with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, American Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, New Jersey Symphony, Charleston Symphony, and the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra. Dr. Cohen holds MM and DMA degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and has published more than 100 articles on the history and literature of the saxophone. Recent CDs include American Landscapes, Common Ground, New York Rising, and Vintage Saxophones Revisited. Dr. Cohen is currently on the faculties of Manhattan School of Music, Rutgers University, New York University, Columbia University, and the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College.

On her recent debut album, Russian Mosaic, pianist Anna Keiserman offers rarely heard gems by Rachmaninoff, Shchedrin, Smirnov, and Medtner. Her performance credits include Le Poisson Rouge, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the Fête de La Musique. As a soloist she has performed works by Rachmaninoff, Haydn, Beethoven and Arensky with the Volgograd Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Keiserman’s awards include top prizes in two International Piano Competitions in Russia and the 2017 “Culture and Art” award from the New Russia Cultural Center. She has served as a faculty member at the NYU Steinhardt School of the Arts, at the Rutgers University Extension Division, and at William Paterson University. Dr. Keiserman received degrees from the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music and the University of Minnesota and recently completed her Doctorate in Piano Performance from Rutgers University, earning the Elizabeth Wyckoff Durham Award for academic distinction and excellence in piano performance.

All MOZAIKA concerts are held on the second Sunday of the month at 2 p.m. A post-performance, online discussion with the musicians follows the program. The artists offer their interpretation of the works, sharing their thoughts on the composers’ diverse identities and unique artistic languages. The concerts are free of charge, but donations are accepted and will go to the RVCC Applied Music Fund to help the College’s music majors pay for private lessons on their primary instruments.

The Jewish Legacy concert also will be available for viewing after the initial performance date. For additional information about the concert or the MOZAIKA Concert Series, contact Anna Keiserman at anna.keiserman@raritanval.edu.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 26, 2021

PR #57