Judith Cohen

Judith Cohen began playing piano at the age of 5 and studied at the Chicago Musical College until she was 18. She was the First Prize Winner in the 1984 Pacific International Piano Competition, prompting jury chair Dr. Bela Nagy to call her “one of the five best pianists I’ve heard in the last fifteen years.” In 1985, Cohen was the only American of eight pianists chosen to perform in the public master classes of Maestro Aldo Ciccolini in Bari, Italy. In 2000, she released three CDs of 20th century piano music for Pear Records, and in the spring of 2003, Capstone Records released a live-concert recording titled In Tandem: Music for Two Pianos, performed by Cohen and pianist Jill Timmons.

Cohen collaborated with photographer Bruce Barnbaum on the two remarkable books as they merged the art forms of music and photography. For these books—titled Tone Poems, Volume 1 and Tone Poems, Volume 2—Judith and Bruce selected solos, duos, and trios that best convey the emotional content of the imagery found inside. A CD of classical music by composers ranging from Bach, Chopin, and Brahms to Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Copland accompany each book. Musicians featured in the duos and trios were drawn from the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

The Tone Poems books are unique. The collaboration is exceptional. The emotional insights are enlightening. The imagery can be viewed together or separately from the music, and the viewer/listener will relate the two in ways that reveal new insights each time.