| Welcome | Program | The Artists | Ordering Tickets | Directions | Outreach |
Nicholas Cords
Violist Nicholas Cords is strongly committed to the advocacy and performance of music from a very broad historic and geographical spectrum. His busy touring schedule has led him in recent years to Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, Alice Tully Hall, the Cologne Philharmonie, and the Library of Congress. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, and with the New York String Seminar Orchestra. His chamber music credits include the Schleswig-Holstein, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, Piccolo Spoleto, Lincoln Center, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Smithsonian Folklife, and Charlottesville festivals.
Mr. Cords is a regular member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, a musical collective that uses the historic Silk Road trading route as a metaphor for musical exchange and creativity in the present. The group has not only traveled to many of the major musical centers of the United States and Europe, but also to China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Egypt, Iran, Syria and a number of the Central Asian Republics. In addition to performing with the ensemble, he has taken a role in the organization and development of new creative projects, programming for concerts and museum residencies, and as an active part of two long-term residencies with the group; one at the Rhode Island School of Design and one at Harvard University. Mr. Cords appears on all three of the ensemble’s albums released by Sony Classical; ‘Silk Road Journeys’, ‘Beyond the Horizon’, and ‘New Impossibilites’.
He has appeared frequently on television and radio including a Chinese National Television broadcast from the Great Wall, the David Letterman Show, numerous National Public Radio broadcasts, Good Morning America, a NHK Japan documentary about the Silk Road Ensemble, and a four year run as resident commentator and performer on WQXR New York’s Radio weekly On A-I-R. Mr. Cords is an active member of many ensembles, including the Caramoor Virtuousi, An Die Musik, Richardson Chamber Players, the Stillwater Music Festival, and the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert. He is also a founding member of Brooklyn Rider; a multi-faceted string quartet dedicated to creative programming, expansion of the repertoire and innovative collaborations. Brooklyn Rider's recordings include the critically acclaimed Silent City for the Harmonia Mundi/World Village label with Persian kemancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor, Passport on In a Circle Records, and a collaboration with singer/songwriter Christina Courtin on her recent self-titled album on the Nonesuch label.
Mr. Cords began his musical education at the Juilliard School where he won top honors in the viola competition and subsequently gave the New York premiere of John Harbison’s Viola Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall. He completed his studies at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. His teachers have included Karen Tuttle, Harvey Shapiro, Joseph Fuchs, and Felix Galamir. Himself a committed teacher, Mr. Cords spends part of his summer schedule teaching at the Bennington Chamber Music and Composers Conference and during the year serves as viola instructor at Princeton University. He has twice participated as a mentor along with other members of the Silk Road Ensemble in the Weill Institute Professional Training Workshops at Carnegie Hall and has also delivered a series of teacher workshops for the New York City Department of Education on music and the role of it can play in cross-cultural understanding. Mr. Cords plays on an instrument made for him in 2004 by famed Brooklyn maker Samuel Zygmuntowicz.