Artist Feature - Graham Cohen
see Graham’s site at grahamcohenmusic.com
Meet Graham. Graham is an incredibly bright and talented violist and composer who trained at the Juilliard School of Music. He reached out to me over the summer to create a visual presence for his multi-faceted musical journey and I was so incredibly thrilled to help turn his vision into a reality. In this article I explore what went into this collaboration.
Graham’s Story
Graham does it all. He plays the viola with incredible technical and musical facility, but that is only the tip of the iceberg of his talent. He can play multiple instruments at an extremely high level, some of which are quite rare such as his 2022 Bevan Wulffenstejn Hardanger fiddle he commissioned and a beautiful banjo made by his great-grandfather. Also, his compositions offer an incredibly fresh perspective on American traditional folk-music combined with some modern techniques and sonorities. You can go down a rabbit hole listening to Graham’s work on YouTube, and trust me - it’s a good hole to fall down.
With all that Graham’s career involves, he needed a website to bring all of these different musical explorations together and to showcase his impressive catalogue of compositions.
Connecting the dots
With building Graham’s site I had a unique challenge in making a site that involved a lot of different types of content. This included a place to display videos, recordings, sheet music downloads, advertising private lessons, events, and to effectively tell his story. I decided to use the home page to give a taste of everything, creating a bright and fun look that matched Graham’s energy and some unique graphic elements that we could use throughout the site. Using his many unique instruments as inspiration, I used one of his photos to create individual “sketches” to keep that spirit of exploration front and center as the user browses the site.
This same concept follows the user to the sheet music page where we see musical compositions displayed with a similar “sketch” effect.
This drawn look reflected in both the font, color palette, and framing of the photos helps reflect that idea of exploration.
Graham’s Approach
One of the things I particularly admire about Graham is he has developed an incredibly forward-thinking strategy to get his music out in front of more people. Because this sort of entrepreneurial spirit is exactly the type of approach I want more musicians to consider I wanted to give Graham a chance to elaborate and explain this ambitious strategy to cultivating his career. Here are a few questions I had for Graham when writing this feature.
NCD: Graham, what were your reasons for building a website?
GC: One of my primary goals in having a website was to have a place where I could conveniently have all the recordings of my music in one place, alongside scores available for purchase. The disadvantage to self-publishing and promoting your works is it can be hard for people to find you, get in touch with you, and actually purchase your music; having it all in one place, easily accessible, without needing me to individually go through every request is a huge advantage for both me and people interested in my music. I also felt it was important to have a place where people could learn about my interests, see and hear what I play, and find out about concerts and events I am playing at. I am hopeful that having a website will give far more people the ability to listen to me play, listen to my music, purchase my music to play themselves, and attend concerts I am part of.
NCD: Tells us about your recording project?
GC: After spending the last 6 years as a viola major at conservatory, post-graduation, I wanted to take some time to focus on my compositions. I've continued to write all throughout college and have a number of solo and chamber music works which I have not had time to get together for a performance or recording. I've seen firsthand how important it is to have recordings of your music posted and out in the world; a Wind Trio I wrote at 11 has received tons of performances across the globe, all because it's available on YouTube. Even when getting recordings, there are often issues in promoting them, as recordings done by established groups often retain proprietary rights over the recordings. Because of this, I came up with the idea to create my own recordings that I can post and promote, and to hire my wonderful friends and musical colleagues I've made through school and summer festivals, and try to get as many of these works recorded and posted as possible. Things are coming together as I've lined up the musicians for 11 different works, and I've just posted the first one. I'm excited to have received fiscal sponsorship from Fractured Atlas to help make this project happen, and I can't wait to see where this project goes and to hear a lot of this music for the very first time.
NCD: Can you elaborate on this unique approach of yours to build your career?
GC: For me, as long as I am playing and creating music, I'm happy. I enjoy a wide variety of genres and styles, from the traditional classical works to historical performance, new music, musical theater, and folk music. In addition to my focus in viola, I also play violin, and always having an affinity for strange instruments as well, decided to learn Viola d'Amore, banjo, and Hardanger Fiddle. My approach has been to try to learn as much about as many things in music as possible, and make connections working in these different areas by always saying yes to the opportunities offered. I've found it to be incredibly rewarding, as I've already had such diverse experiences; I recently had 3 weekends of concerts where I got to work with Les Violons du Roy in Quebec City to play alongside 3 fabulous singers for "Vivaldi's La Senna Festeggiante", followed by an all-Rameau program in New York City with Juilliard's Historical Performance ensemble, J415, followed by a world premiere of Alan Belkin's Viola Concerto with MusicaNova in Arizona, with a Canadian fiddle set my friend and I put together as an encore. This level of variety is both what I love most about music and, I feel, a huge advantage when it comes to putting together my career.
- Follow along with Graham’s journey at grahamcohenmusic.com
- You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel @grahamcohenmusic
- Follow Graham on Facebook at facebook.com/grahamcohencomposer
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