Carson P. Cooman (born June 12, 1982,

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located i ...

) is an American composer and organist. Cooman was first given piano lessons as a three-year-old and began studying organ under Bruce Klanderman at age ten. He graduated from

Allendale Columbia School Allendale Columbia School (often shortened to Allendale Columbia or abbreviated as A.C.) is an independent, nonsectarian, college preparatory school for students in nursery through twelfth grade in Rochester, New York, USA. The Columbia School for ...

and then studied music at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. He then went on to study at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, studying with Bernard Rands and Judith Weir. Cooman is a prolific composer, having composed almost 1,000 works by the time he reached age thirty. As a performer, he tours as a professional organist concentrating on the performance of modern composers; he has premiered more than one hundred works for organ. Cooman also writes on music, having been editor of the ''Living Music Journal'' from 2005 to 2009 and a frequent contributor to the music publication ''

Fanfare A fanfare (or fanfarade or flourish) is a short musical flourish which is typically played by trumpets, French horns or other brass instruments, often accompanied by percussion. It is a "brief improvised introduction to an instrumental perfo ...

''. He is currently composer-in-residence at Harvard Memorial Church. In 2018, Cooman wrote ''Two Orgelkids Pieces'', specially composed for the so-called "Do-organ" of

Orgelkids Orgelkids (Dutch, "organkids") is an educational project meant to familiarize and educate children with the pipe organ musical instrument. The project was initiated in the Netherlands in 2009 by Lydia Vroegindeweij and is directed towards cultura ...

. One of the compositions is dedicated to Lydia Vroegindeweij, who started Orgelkids in 2009. At the webpage the compositions can be heard.

Footnotes

References

*Walter Simmons, "Carson Cooman". ''

The New Grove Dictionary of American Music ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...

'', 2nd edition (rev. May 28, 2015, Oxford Music Online). *M. Power, "A Minimum of Means". ''Choir and Organ'' 15 (2007), pp. 15–17.

External links

Official website of Carson Cooman
American classical organists American male organists American male classical composers Harvard University alumni American classical composers Musicians from Rochester, New York Carnegie Mellon University alumni 20th-century organists 20th-century classical composers 21st-century organists 21st-century classical composers 21st-century American composers 1982 births Living people 20th-century American composers 21st-century American keyboardists Male classical organists {{US-composer-20thC-stub