Tamara Cashour

Member since 2006

Tamara Cashour is a composer and music researcher/writer of choral music (sacred and secular) and chamber music (instrumental and/or vocal), including works for solo piano, voice and piano, and solo instrumental music. She also writes piano transcriptions and orchestrations of piano music, as well as music for opera and musical theater, and incidental music for the dramatic theater. Her artistic platform is the creation of new interdisciplinary and hybrid amalgams that test the boundaries of ossified "pure" forms of music, theater, and performance. Her research areas include Music Semiotics, Critical
Theory of Performance, and the music of Richard Strauss, Alexander Glazunov, and Franz Schubert. Tamara also works as a writer of prefaces for Musikproduktion Hoflich, a publisher in Munich dedicated to publishing rare and underexposed historical scores, and as a book reviewer for the Journal for the IAWM (International Alliance of Women in Music), The Kapralova Society, Women's Philharmonia Orchestra, and Phenomenology Online.

Tamara won two awards at The American Prize 2022: second place in Music for Social Justice and third place in the Professional Choral Division, for her SATB composition Forbearance, a setting of the Ralph Waldo Emerson poem urging restraint, asceticism, humility, and compassionate conservationism in the interest of the animals, such as birds, who share the planet with humans. The piece calls for singers and other professionals to learn and essay at least one birdcall during the first measures of the piece as a means to teach empathy toward birds and shed light on the very real problem of species extinction.

The New York City choral ensemble C4 recorded the piece on film during the peak of the COVID epidemic (September–December 2020). Tamara's Queens Suite, a chamber work for strings and harp, placed as a finalist in the Instrumental Chamber Composition division of the American Prize 2022. Queens Suite was a finalist for the 2015 IAWM International Conference. Other of Tamara's awards include first prize for Women Only Choral Composition Competition with her work Girly Hurly Burly, a comedic, enthusiastic burlesque for SSAA chorus, violins, hurdy gurdy, actress, and dancers, as well as six ASCAP Plus awards. Tamara's works have been performed throughout the United States and internationally by such ensembles as Spektral Quartet, Klang Quartet, members of the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, Manhattan Saxophone Quartet, C4, Counterpoint Vocal Ensemble, and NY Treble Singers, among others.

Tamara possesses a B.A. in Music Theory from Columbia University, an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration on feminist and avant-garde theater, and an M.F.A. in Music Composition from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also Artistic Director of OperAvant, Inc., an inter-disciplinary performance company featuring new works in music, theater, and dance, as well as contemporary deconstructions of works from the historical canon. The company was a recipient of a 2021 City Arts Corps Grant from New York Foundation for the Arts. Tamara was formerly on the Collaborative Piano staff at The New School, 2008–2023. She was formerly Music Director at The Presbyterian Church of New Rochelle, and a former organist at Church of Christ Scientist, Tarrytown. She is currently the accompanist for two NYC choral organizations: The Bronx Concert Singers and The Peace of Heart Choir.