Ron Cohen Mann, the winner of this year's Ben Steinberg Musical Legacy Award, plays oboe, a double-reed instrument that’s notoriously difficult to play but allows players a fair bit of control over the sound that’s produced.
Oboists make their own reeds by hand – there’s even a how-to book sold online – in order to create the instrument’s sound, Cohen Mann said. “That puts you in a position of empowering you to create the sound, in whatever direction and esthetic that appeals to you.”
He added that although the oboe is difficult to play he loves the challenge of performing on the instrument.
Israeli-born, Cohen Mann, 24, lived in the Netherlands with his family until he was 12, when they immigrated to Canada. While attending Seycove Secondary School in North Vancouver, he played piano in two jazz bands and accompanied a jazz choir on piano. He also played flute for a couple of years and then switched to oboe at 14.
“When I started oboe, I took it pretty seriously,” he said, adding that his first teacher was Roger Cole, the principal oboist for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
At the time, Cohen Mann didn’t know where the oboe would lead him, but he said he did have dreams of becoming a professional oboist. He joined Vancouver’s Youth Orchestra, which he said was his “first opportunity to play with talented colleagues who ended up studying at conservatories and universities.”
Cohen Mann studied for his bachelor’s degree in music at the University of British Columbia, where he was awarded the UBC Medal in Music. He went on to earn a master’s degree at the Mannes School of Music at The New School in New York, and is currently studying for an artist diploma at the Yale School of Music, in New Haven, Conn.
Cohen Mann has performed with the Manhattan Symphonie, L’Orchestre de la Francophonie, the National Academy Orchestra of Canada and Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, among others, and with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Koerner Hall in Toronto, and Maison Symphonique in Montreal. He’s also active in solo and chamber music at frequent recitals.
“I’m very much a performer,” Cohen Mann said, adding that as a child he used to put on puppet shows for friends and family. “I found a performer’s voice in the oboe,” he continued.
He was a prizewinner at the 2014 Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal Standard Life Competition 2014, and the winner of the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition 2013. “I came in with the mentality of just wanting to create beautiful music,” he said. “Putting the music first and foremost is the best you can do.”
The consummate performer also teaches with Yale School of Music’s Music in Schools Initiative, and last year he was an oboe instructor at Yale. “I come from a long line of teachers,” he said, adding that his mother, Michal, teaches psychology at the graduate level, and his grandmother, Judith, taught at the Shema Center for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired in Israel.
Toronto audiences can hear Cohen Mann play at a free May 27 recital at Temple Sinai[This show has since been postponed]. The temple established the musical legacy award 32 years ago. Named after Temple Sinai’s former director of music, Ben Steinberg in 1996, the award aims to encourage the careers of young Jewish artists in the Canadian community as well as the performance of music by Jewish composers.
At the recital, Cohen Mann will perform oboe sonatas by Vivaldi and Henri Dutilleux, two fantasy pieces by Karl Nielson and a concerto in one movement by Eugene Goossens. Most concertos are written for a solo instrument and an orchestra, but the Goossens piece “was originally conceived for oboe and piano,” Cohen Mann said. The recital also includes Jewish melodies by the Russian composer Joseph Achron. “He’s done a transcription for violin and piano, which I’ll be adjusting for oboe,” Cohen Mann said.
Accompanying Cohen Mann on piano will be Chatham, Ont., native Benjamin Smith. “He’s wonderfully expressive. When I heard I was doing a recital in Toronto, he was the first person I thought of,” Cohen Mann said.
******NOTE: The performance slated for May 27 has been postponed to a later date.