Racheal Cogan :: recorder player, composer, and music educator

Photo by Jaquie Mitterand.

Racheal Cogan is a recorder player who has worked extensively in modal music forms around the world. She completed her BMus (Hons) degree at Monash University in 2005 with a thesis on Sufism and Persian classical music. Since July 2005 she has been based in Sydney, where she performs in duo with percussionist Tony Lewis, freelances as a recorder player, teaches, and composes. In 2008 and 2009 she is working with Cirque du Soleil, based in Macau, China.

Racheal Cogan & Tony Lewis released their duo CD Transience: contemporary modal music with Orpheus Music in January 2007. Their unique repertoire includes traditional & classical pieces from Greece, Turkey and Iran, as well as compositions by Cogan, acclaimed Greek musician Ross Daly, and Persian santur master Ostād Farāmarz Pāyvar. Racheal and Tony’s work is collectively drawn from a large amount of first hand experience in the study and performance of musical forms across the world, spanning Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, and the indigenous musics of Australia. Transience has had glowing reviews from the mainstream press, including the Sydney Morning Herald (John Shand), and ABC’s Limelight magazine (Jaslyn Hall). More than half of the repertoire on Transience are Racheal’s compositions.

In Melbourne in 1993 Racheal co-founded the Greek music group the haBiBis, whose CD Intoxication won an ARIA award in 1999. In 1998 she received funding from the Australia Council to study with recorder players Walter van Hauwe and Jantien Westerveld in the Netherlands. In 2000, with assistance from the Ian Potter Foundation, she travelled to Athens to study, perform and record with Ross Daly and his ensemble Labyrinth throughout Greece, Turkey, and Macedonia. Since then she has had funding from the Australia Council to study Persian classical music with Hossein Omoumi in France (2002), an Asialink residency in Chennai, India to study Karnatic (South Indian) Music with mridangam player Karaikudi R. Mani (2003), and she has performed with and composed repertoire for Kurdish musician and instrument maker Fardin Karamkhani in the USA (2001 - 2003). She recorded a personal CD, Sojourn, in Greece, funded by Arts Victoria, with Ross Daly, Kelly Thomas and Angeliki Xekalaki. Sojourn was released in Australia in 2006 by Orpheus Music.

Racheal Cogan has performed extensively, highlights include:

With Tony Lewis including the Art Gallery of New South Wales
With Fardin Karamkhani including the Festival of Nations (2003 – Missouri, USA)
With Ross Daly & Labyrinth including
Sea Songs Festival (2000 - Rhodes and Karpathos /Greece; and 2001 - Rhodes, Halki, and Kassos /Greece)
Megaro Mousikis (Thessalonica’s Concert Hall /Greece)
New Age and World Music Festival (2000 Skopje /Macedonia)
Megaro Gizi (2001 Santorini-Greece)
Bursa Concert Hall (2001 Turkey)
With the haBiBis including
live to Television for the AFI Award ceremony (Darling Harbour Convention Centre, Sydney 1998)
ABC Arts Show
Adelaide Festival (Sth Aust)
Melbourne Festival (Vic.)
National Folk Festival (Australian Capital Territory)
Woodford Folk Festival (Qld.)
Brunswick Music Festival (Vic.)
Port Fairy Folk Festival (Vic.)
The Continental (Vic.)
Victor Harbor Folk Festival (Sth Aust.)
Glendi Festival (NT)
Also for the Composing Women’s Festival (Sydney with saxophonist Jenny Game, and Melbourne – both solo and with the haBiBis)

Orpheus Music have published eleven of Racheal’s compositions in four publications:

Nanourisma, by R. Cogan. Published by Orpheus Music 2006, Australia. This 6/7-minute piece piece is written for a treble recorder with vocalisation and tuned percussion. Nanourisma can be heard on the CD Transience.
Absence and For Fardin, by R. Cogan. Published by Orpheus Music 2006, Australia. Absence is a 12-minute composition in three movements for a Ganassi recorder in G with hand percussion. For Fardin is a 4-minute composition featuring two recorders played simultaneously and percussion. Both works can be heard on the CD Transience.
Syrta: four Cretan style Syrta (two traditional and two that Cogan composed) arranged for three recorders (treble, tenor and bass). Published by Orpheus Music 2004, Australia.
"A well produced volume of some highly interesting and appealing music" – A.J. Dopalik, The Recorder Magazine, UK; Summer 2005. These pieces can be heard played with two recorders on the CD Sojourn.
Asiadeh and Other Songs: four compositions for Treble Recorder by Racheal Cogan. Published by Orpheus Music 2004, Australia.
"Well conceived and a must for any players looking for something a little different" – A.J. Dopalik, The Recorder Magazine, UK; Summer 2004. One of these pieces, Panjaneh, can be heard on the CD Transience.