Cooman premières : "Flying Machine" for Orchestra and "Moonshards" for alto saxophone, horn, trumpet, percussion, and piano

Carson Cooman's new orchestral work Flying Machine, scored for 2+Picc.2+Eh.2+Bcl.2+Cbn/4.3.3.1/2perc.timp/hp.pno/strings was recently premièred by the Harvard-Radcliffe orchestra. In a review of the October 31st concert in the Harvard Crimson, the piece was described as follows:

The piece, depicting the construction and flight of a machine, immediately conjured the mystery of creation, with unpredictable harmonies and a rumbling tension foreshadowing the takeoff to come. The percussion creaked, supporting the piece from underneath and generating a sense of the machine that was flecked with eerie harmonics deftly executed by the violins.

After the sound of the assembly grew to a roar, the orchestra launched. The strings propelled the machine with driving triplets, and the entire ensemble shifted and swelled together as if impelled by an unrelenting force.

On November 2nd, Cooman's Moon Shards (2007) for alto saxophone, horn, trumpet, percussion, and piano, commissioned by Andrew Pelletier, the International Horn Society, and the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio received its formal première.

Other Cooman performances in November, 2008 include the November 19, 2008 consortium premiere of Enchanted Tracings (Piano Concerto No. 2) (2008) for solo piano and wind ensemble; Donna Amato, piano, Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble, Denis Colwell, conductor; Carnegie Music Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the European première of Two Fragments (2004) for guitar quartet; Corona Guitar Kvartet, Literaturhaus, Copenhagen, Denmark.