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Nicholas Cords
Viola

For more than two decades, omnivorous violist Nicholas Cords has been on the front line of a growing constellation of projects as performer, educator, and cultural advocate. A founding member of Brooklyn Rider, newly appointed Co-Artistic director of Silkroad, and viola faculty at New England Conservatory, he is deeply committed to music from a broad variety of traditions and epochs, with a particular passion for the cross section between the long tradition of classical music and the polyglot music of today.

Mr. Cords serves as violist, Programming Chair, and Co-Artistic director of Silkroad, a musical collective founded by Yo-Yo Ma in 2000 with the simple belief that radical cross-cultural collaboration leads to a more hopeful world. This mission is poignantly explored by the recent Oscar nominated documentary by Morgan Neville, The Music Of Strangers, which profiles the individual stories of Ensemble members and makes a case for why culture matters in today’s world.

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 and mentors have included Karen Tuttle, Harvey Shapiro, Joseph Fuchs, and Felix Galamir. A committed teacher, Mr. Cords taught for seven years at Stony Brook University in New York and currently makes his home in Boston where he teaches at New England Conservatory. Mr. Cords recently participated as a jury member for the prestigious ARD Competition (Viola Category) in Munich this past September. Mr. Cords plays on an instrument made for him in 2014 by famed Brooklyn maker Samuel Zygmuntowicz, modeled on the ex-William Primrose Giuseppe Guarneri (filius Andrea) from 1697. He performs on bows from a wide variety of the world’s top modern makers including Charles Espey, Benoit Rolland, and others.