This article introduces one of the six finalists for the position of Music Director of The Syracuse Orchestra. We will profile the finalists before the first of two concerts that each will conduct. The finalists will be presented to the public at events that are listed on the orchestra’s website, where professional biographies can also be read. The successful candidate will be announced at the end of the 2025-26 season.
Maurice Cohn will conduct The Syracuse Orchestra for two performances of “Inspired by Jazz” on January 10 and 11 in St. Paul’s Syracuse. He is the fourth of six candidates running for the position of music director. The program will consist of orchestral music by composers who crossed the boundaries between jazz, theater and classical music.
Cohn is music director of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra; Highlights of his 2024-2025 season included debuts with the Omaha Symphony and the Bohslav Martin Philharmonic, conducting Stravinsky’s “Firebird” and Tchaikovsky’s “Rococo Variations.”
Cohn said he moved from focusing on the cello to conducting an orchestra while teaching and conducting part-time in college.
“I fell in love with the almost jigsaw puzzle of working with 80 talented individuals in different parts of the orchestra,” he said. “I found it so fun to think of my role as the role of bringing all the pieces together into a complete, polished performance.”
He added that in his role as a conductor, he tries to view each artist as an individual.
“I really want us to get to know each other, to build a sense of trust that extends to the whole orchestra.”
Cohn said he believes the only way one can make a living in the classical music profession is to benefit from good colleagues and many generous mentors.
“I have received encouragement and support from the time I began studying music throughout my educational and professional experiences,” Cohn said. “Most recently, during my three years as Assistant Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, I was mentored by Music Director Fabio Luisi, who—among other skills development—helped me see conducting as a way to take audiences on a dramatic journey through music.
Cohn’s main goal is to invent new ways to present orchestral music to contemporary audiences. He said he is open to experimentation, exploring programming that combines different art forms, engaging audiences in experiences that are unique and authentic rather than algorithmic, which is how much of the media consumed today is selected.
While conducting The Syracuse Orchestra at the Landmark Theater in 2022, Cohn saw the ensemble (then named Symphoria) participate in a new version of the “Nutcracker Suite” that combined a new narrative and circus performers with Tchaikovsky’s traditional music.
“I saw that the orchestra was, first of all, composed of highly talented professionals. Second, the musicians showed a willingness to try new approaches to the presentation of classical music. It’s already in their DNA,” Cohn said. He also noticed that audiences in central New York are proud of the orchestra. “The audience cares so much that it has to be like performing for your friends,” he said.
Cohn said his repertoire is constantly growing and that he enjoys constantly adding new pieces as well as returning to works he has conducted in the past.
“It’s never the same presentation,” he said. “Every time I work with musicians on a repeat piece, I enjoy the wonderful experience of changing my relationship with the music, seeing it in new ways.”
Cohn, a reader of mystery novels, compared each repeat performance to reading the book in his 20s, then re-reading it years later and discovering nuances and interpretations that weren’t present on the first reading.
Recognizing that each performance is unique is one of the values of attending live concerts, Cohn said. But he added that the benefits of sharing real-time experiences with an orchestra are many.
“Among the layered reasons for being at a performance—including that it’s fun and exciting—is the immediacy of the musical highlights.” Cohn said, “Take Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and the trombones. They sit mute in the wind section for 20 minutes. The entire symphony unfolds around them until the fourth and final movement. Finally, they play and reinforce the celebratory transition from minor to major in a triumphant moment that simply cannot be rendered in the same way.”
Cohn will appear as a candidate first at the Casual Series concerts on January 10th and 11th. The program will open with the four-minute “Victory Stride” by James P. Johnson, written in 1944. Johnson is known as the “father of stride piano,” a unique outgrowth of ragtime in which the left hand plays a bass note on beats one and three, then a higher chord on beats two and four. The right hand establishes a theme that is repeated in improvised riffs accompanied by a bass rhythm. Scott Cuellar will appear as a pianist in this work.
The orchestra will be joined by mezzo-soprano Katie Weber, who will sing three songs by George Gershwin. An active soloist and collaborator in stage, cabaret and concert performances, she is a faculty member at Syracuse University, where she teaches musical theatre.
Weill’s Symphony No. 2, which Cohn conducted in his Omaha debut, will be the finale of the 90-minute concert. It is composed in a classical style and is sometimes referred to as a “Symphonische Fantasie”. Exiled from Germany during the rise of the Nazi regime, Weill wrote the symphony in Paris and premiered it in Amsterdam in 1934.
Cohn, interviewed on Facetime while in West Virginia, said he was watching the news and watching snow pile up in downtown New York. He has a good chance of getting his wish next week when he arrives at the “Inspired By Jazz” rehearsals. His next chance will be in February when he returns for his second ‘Love Stories’ concert on Valentine’s Day.
VIEW DETAILS
What: Casual, “Inspired By Jazz”
Where: Syracuse St. Paul, 220 E. Fayette St.
When: January 10 at 7 p.m. and January 11 at 3 p.m
Running time: 90 minutes, without intermission
Tickets: $50 main session; $40 Section B; seniors with a discount. Students with ID $5; under 18 free
Purchase: 315-299-5598 or syracuseorchestra.org
Parking: Free on the street.
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