Roslyn man, 82, pursues songwriting passion

Murray Cohen  dreams of a future for his music.

Cohen, 82, a Roslyn resident of 63 years, has composed about 60 pieces and hopes that someday his music will be performed by a symphony orchestra.

Since 1994, he has been a member of the Long Island Composers Alliance and has had the opportunity to hear chamber ensembles and individual musicians play his music.

“It’s very difficult to get a symphony orchestra, to get any organization, to introduce your work because it costs them a lot of money for rehearsal and to have it played,” Cohen said.

Cohen, who was born on Oct. 21, 1929, grew up in Washington, N.J. His mother enjoyed playing the piano and pressured him to do the same.

As a child, Cohen disliked practicing the piano, but his appreciation for chamber music grew over time. Cohen found inspiration in an older boy in his town, Gilbert F. Winkler, who would become the first American pianist to play in the Salzburg Festival in Austria during World War I.

“He had a technical ability to play the virtuoso pieces, and I didn’t have that ability at that time. I was someone who aspired to that,” said Cohen, who was 17 when he began learning from Winkler.

Shortly after high school, Cohen enlisted in the Air Force and fixed aircraft in Alaska during the Korean War. He left after almost four years of service and began attending Bard College in upstate Annandale-on-Hudson,  where he studied music and physics, earning a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1954. That same year, he met the woman who became his wife, Dale, a psychology major. They married in 1958.

He enrolled in a graduate program at New York University and earned a master of science degree in physics. After graduating in 1957, Cohen worked as an engineer. Early in his career, he was employed at Barnes Engineering in Stamford, Conn., where he worked on technology for NASA’s first human spaceflight. During this project, he met astronaut Gordon Cooper, one of America’s first seven astronauts who in 1963 orbited the Earth for more than 24 hours. Cohen retired from engineering in 1993 and turned to composing music.

He had begun to study it in 1978, long before retirement. He said he found  composing music intimidating when he was younger. “I thought, ‘How could I possibly?’ in the light of these geniuses,” said Cohen, referring to the classical composers Beethoven and Chopin.

With time, Cohen chose not to be intimidated.

“He is a marvelous individual and he writes very well,” said Avraham Sternklar, a fellow composer in LICA who has been with the organization since its inception in 1972.

Sternklar has been an influence, and Cohen has dedicated a composition to him, “Millennium Suite.” Sternklar, who has performed Cohen’s work several times on the piano, said he is honored that Cohen dedicated a composition to him.

About 20 years ago, Cohen noticed a gradual deterioration of his hearing, but he still continues to compose with the help of his hearing aids.

Among his works is a piece he wrote in 1993 called “Sonoran Suite,” a 25-minute three-part  composition inspired by the Sonoran Desert, a portion of which is located in southwest Arizona. The three parts of the suite are “Saguaro,” named for the giant cacti that grow in the desert; “Canyon Flight,” inspired by the hawks and raptors flying above the Sabino Canyon in Tuscon; and “Border Echoes,”  a combination of Mexican mariachi music and classical Spanish music.

“He’s much happier now. He was a very good engineer, but he didn’t like the working conditions,” said Dale Cohen. “There was something kind of deadening to him to actually go in there to do the daily putting-this-together-with-that. He’s much happier now that he can let his creativity to be his guide.”