Acclaimed as one of America’s outstanding ensembles, the New York City-based Cassatt  String Quartet has performed throughout the world, with appearances at Alice Tully Hall and  Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York; Tanglewood Music Theater; the Kennedy  Center,Washington, DC; Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris; Centro National de las Artes,  Mexico City; Maeda Hall, Tokyo; and Beijing Central Conservatory. At the Library of Congress,  the Cassatt performed on the library’s matched quartet of Stradivarius instruments.  

Esteemed music critic Alex Ross named The Cassatt three times to his “10 Best Classical  Recordings” in The New Yorker, and the ensemble has been featured on NPR’s “Performance  Today,” Boston’s WGBH, New York’s WQXR and WNYC, on Canada’s CBC Radio, and on  Radio France.  

The Cassatt’s numerous awards are from the National Endowment for the Arts, the USArtists  International, Chamber Music America, CMA/ASCAP, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust,  Meet the Composer, and the Amphion, Copland, Fromm and Alice M. Ditson Music  Foundations. Since 1995, the ensemble has been on the performing artist roster for the New York  State Council on the Arts.  

With a deep commitment to nurturing young musicians, the Cassatt has offered classes for  composers and performers at the American Academy, Rome; the Toho School, Tokyo; Bowdoin  International Music Festival; Columbia; Cornell; Princeton; Syracuse Universities, and the  University of Pennsylvania. The quartet is in residence annually at Maine's Seal Bay Festival of  American Contemporary Chamber Music and Cassatt in the Basin! in Texas.  

Equally adept at classical masterpieces and contemporary music, the Cassatt has collaborated  with members of the Tokyo, Cleveland, and Vermeer Quartets, pianists Ursula Oppens and  Marc-Andre Hamelin, clarinetist David Shifrin, flutist Ransom Wilson, jazz pianist Fred Hersch,  didgeriedoo player Simon 7, the Trisha Brown Dance Company, and composers Louis  Andriessen, Kaija Saariaho, Joan Tower and John Corigliano. The Cassatt’s discography  includes new quartets by Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Stucky; Guggenheim fellow Daniel S.  Godfrey; and Grawemeyer and Rome Prize winner Sebastian Currier. 

Named for the celebrated impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, the quartet consists of Muneko  Otani, violin; Jennifer Leshnower, violin; Ah Ling Neu, viola; and Elizabeth Anderson, cello.

I. Gerald Cohen " Playing for Our Lives"

1) Beryozkele

2) Brundibar

3) Dies Irae

II. Andy Teirstein "Restless Nation"

1) My Eyes were Hungry

2) Our Teachers..... Flora and Fauna

3) Recces

4) The Door of No Return

5) Stories of Rocks and Rivers

6) Finding Our Way Home

Composers 

Gerald Cohen has been praised by Gramophone Magazine for his “linguistic fluidity and melodic gift,” creating music that “reveals a very personal modernism that…offers great emotional rewards.”  His opera, Steal a Pencil for Me, based on a true concentration camp love story, had its world premiere production by Opera Colorado in January 2018; excerpts were featured at Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers Festival in 2016. Cohen is a noted synagogue cantor and baritone; his experience as a singer informs his dramatic, lyrical compositions. Cohen’s best-known work, his “shimmering setting” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) of Psalm 23, has received thousands of performances from synagogues and churches to Carnegie Hall and the Vatican.  Recent instrumental compositions include Voyagers, a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Voyager spacecraft, which had its premiere at New York’s Hayden Planetarium; and Playing for our lives, a tribute to the music and musicians of the WWII Terezin concentration camp near Prague. Both of these works were written for the Cassatt String Quartet, which is recording them for an album of Cohen’s music to be released in 2022.

Cohen has received commissioning grants from organizations including Meet the Composer, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, American Composers Forum and Westchester Arts Council. He received a BA in music from Yale University and a DMA in composition from Columbia University. He is cantor at Shaarei Tikvah, Scarsdale, NY, and is on the faculties of The Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College. Cohen’s compositions are available by contacting him through his website www.geraldcohenmusic.com; he also has works published by Oxford University Press, G. Schirmer/AMP and Transcontinental Music Publications.

ANDY TEIRSTEIN ‘s music has been described by The New York Times as “ingenious,” and “superbly crafted.” A student of Leonard Bernstein, Teirstein composes for concert hall, film, theater, and dance.  His CD Open Crossings, draws on Balkan and Appalachian influences. He has composed film scores for BBC and PBS.  The Village Voice wrote that Teirstein’s music “seems to speak in celestial accents of some utopia whose chief industry is dancing,” and he composes often for dance companies. As an actor, he performed in the Broadway show, Barnum, the TV series Search for Tomorrow, and the film Sophie’s Choice. An Arts Professor at New York University, Teirstein is director of the NYU Global Institute, Translucent Borders, which looks at dance and music at borders. In this role, he initiated collaborations with dancers and musicians in Ghana, Israel/Palestine, Cuba and Greece, produced conferences in Abu Dhabi and New York, directed residencies at the Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival and the Blue Mountain Center, and facilitated performances at Lincoln Center and NYU. Teirstein has received awards from NYFA, the NEA, the ASCAP Foundation, and others. His opera/musical theater works include Winter Man, Papushko, A Blessing on the Moon, How They Broke Away, and The Vagabonds. www.andyteirstein.com