World, Ethnic, Folk, and Traditional Instruments, Voice, Music
Mal Barsamian
Private Lessons Instructor, Oud
Mal Barsamian represents the third generation of oud (lute) players in his family. Having obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees in classical guitar performance under Robert Paul Sullivan at the New England Conservatory of Music, he went on to become a sought-after player of the oud and dumbeg (hand drum). He has played within Armenian, Greek, and Middle Eastern musical communities throughout the country for over thirty years, and also performs on guitar, clarinet and saxophone. He performed with the late Esber Korporcu, an important figure in Boston's Middle-Eastern music community, and has also appeared with Mehmet Sanlikol's Dunya organization. Mal is a specialist in music written by Armenian composers active in Istanbul during the later years of the Ottoman Empire.
Beth Bahia Cohen
Private Lessons Instructor, Violin traditions of the World
Beth Bahia Cohen has spent a large part of her career exploring how the violin is played in various cultures. She was trained as a classical violinist and violist in NY, getting her master's degree from Manhattan School of Music, and spent several years performing with numerous symphony, ballet, opera and chamber orchestras in New York and Europe, as well as in Broadway shows and commercial recording studios.
Beth then traveled, studied and performed with masters of the violin and other bowed instruments from Hungary, Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, and Norway. She plays several Greek lyras, the Turkish bowed tanbur and kabak kemane, the Egyptian rababa, the Norwegian hardanger fiddle, and more. She plays village music from Hungary, Greek music from various regions of Greece, Turkish classical and folk music, and Arabic and Klezmer music. She has been the recipient of many travel and research grants, including the NEA/Artists International grant and the Radcliffe Bunting fellowship. She performs regularly with several groups and as a soloist in The Art of the Bow, which brings together the various bowed instrument traditions as well as her original music, and she teaches workshops and ensembles in universities throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. As an Applied Music faculty member in the Tufts WEFT program, Beth teaches the violin traditions mentioned above, as well as European classical violin and Celtic music.
Ian I. Goldstein
Private Lessons Instructor, Mandolin & Guitar
Ian Goldstein, Ph.D., is an ethnomusicologist, teacher, and musician based in Cambridge, MA. He is multi-instrumentalist performer on mandolin, acoustic & electric guitar, lap slide, and oud, as well as a vocalist.
Empowering Students
As an instructor, Ian is guided by the belief that music making should be a joyful, fulfilling experience. He is dedicated to helping students cultivate their own sense of self compassion when it comes to musical learning. For Ian, developing confidence and self-direction are as important as establishing good technique and mastering repertoire.
The mandolin is a surprisingly versatile instrument. At Tufts, Ian's students have studied a wide variety of styles, from Celtic, bluegrass, new American string music, and European classical, to jazz manouche, Bulgarian folk dance tunes, and Brazilian choro.
Studying Musical Thinking and Interaction
Ian's teaching is deeply informed by his ethnomusicological research. As a scholar, teacher, and performer, he is interested in embodied and social cognition—how musicians learn and think through their bodies, as well as in relation to others—and in the psychology of music teaching & learning. His dissertation on intercultural musical collaborations in Spain and Morocco explores questions of musical competence, multi-musical sensibility, and collective memory in the work of La Banda Morisca, Chekara, and ECM recording artist Amina Alaoui—three high-profile music projects based in the southern Spanish region of Andalucía. A published author, his review article on "Music and Cognition," appears in Oxford Bibliographies, while a forthcoming article will be published in the new Journal of Arab Music Research.
Playing Well with Others
As a performer, Ian is equally at home performing in American-roots-rock and indie folk bands, working with New England singer-songwriters, or creating novel mixtures in more eclectic global-music settings. Among the many artists with whom he has worked, Ian has played with noted New England-based musicians Ryan Fitzsimmons, Beth Cohen, Malcolm Barsamian, Peter Tillotson, Mohammed Mejaour, and Melissa Ferrick. Most recently he has collaborated with Tufts Faculty members Paul Lehrman and Jeffrey Summit to present "Songs of Resistance," a concert program featuring music of political and social protest from the 1950s through the present day.
Ian holds a Ph.D. in Music ('17) from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. in Music ('10) from Tufts University, and a B.A. in Politics ('99) from Brandeis University.
Cathleen Read
Private Lessons Instructor, Koto
Cathleen Read, B.A., Mount Holyoke College; Ph.D., Wesleyan University. Studied sokyoku (koto music) of the Yamada School for twenty years. In 1974, she became the first foreigner to join a professional Yamada School musicians' guild, when she was admitted into the shachu of Nakanoshima Kin'ichi-Sensei, one of Japan's renowned artists, and given the performing name Ayakano. Ms. Read has concertized widely in the United States, Japan and West Africa.
Warren Senders
Private Lessons Instructor, Hindustani Music, Voice (Indian Music)
Warren Senders is an internationally recognized musician and educator with decades of involvement in the artistic and pedagogical traditions of India as well as those of Western, African and African-American musics. He has received numerous fellowships and awards for his mastery of the Hindustani khyal vocal style; his concerts in India, Europe and North America have been widely acclaimed. Also trained as a jazz bassist, he founded the pan-cultural ensemble Antigravity in 1981; the group's two CDs have received raves from music critics all over the world. As a teacher, he is dedicated advocate of experiential "learning-by-doing." At New England Conservatory of Music, he developed curriculum initiatives in which music from many cultures is integrated into subjects as diverse as poetry, history and art. An expert on the stimulation and nurturing of individual creativity, Mr. Senders is on the faculty of Music Education at the New England Conservatory of Music and Tufts University.
Former faculty of University of Vermont, Emerson College, Babson College, Berklee College of Music, Museum School of Fine Arts.
Rich Stillman
Private Lessons Instructor, Banjo
Rich Stillman has taught literally hundreds of students to play banjo, both face-to-face and worldwide through internet lessons. He studied with Tony Trischka, and is a six-time winner of the Lowell Bluegrass Banjo contest and a two-time New England banjo champion. Rich is a longtime member of the perennial New England bluegrass band Southern Rail, with whom he has recorded four CDs. In the 1990s, Rich founded WayStation, a band that combined folk and blues material with bluegrass instrumentation. WayStation toured for eight years and recorded one successful CD. Along the way, Rich found time to fill the banjo chair with local favorites Adam Dewey and Crazy Creek and The Bogus Family, recording two CDs with each, and played memorable sets with Peter Rowan, James Monroe and the Arlington High School orchestra. As a teacher, Rich has been on the faculty of Banjo Camp North for nine of its ten years. The book Banjo Camp includes one of Rich's workshops as well as articles by Pete Seeger, Tony Trischka, Bill Keith and Pete Wernick, and his book Bluegrass Banjo from All Sides was released in September 2012 by Mel Bay Publishing. Rich has given banjo workshops at many local bluegrass festivals. He is a student of classic era 5-string banjo and has compiled a CD of fingerstyle banjo music from the turn of the 20th century. Rich has taught banjo as an adjunct faculty member at Phillips Andover Academy, and is associated with local teaching studios at The Music Emporium and The Real School of Music.