Biography

Judith Cohen is a Canadian ethnomusicologist, medievalist, singer, instrumentalist and storyteller. She did her doctorate and master’s at the Université de Montréal, and is a research associate at several universities, including Universidade Nova de Lisboa-INET, Concordia, Carlton and Haifa.  Known internationally for her work as both a scholar and performer of Sephardic music, she has pioneered ethnomusicological fieldwork in music among Crypto-Jewish communities in Portugal and Spain, and, more recently, northeastern Brazil. She is the Consultant-General Editor of the Spain 1952 collection of the legendary Alan Lomax, and was the first Loma Fellow at the Library of Congress. Dr Cohen has published a wide range of articles and book chapters. At York, she has taught courses in medieval and renaissance music as well as panoramas of global music and Western Art Music history for both majors and non-majors; she has also given guest lectures in Spanish, French and Portuguese at universities in Spain, Portugal, Brazil and elsewhere.  An inveterate traveller since long before cellphones, fax and internet, she also works with music of the Balkans, French Canada, Spain, Portugal, klezmer/Yiddish, the European medieval period, and pan-European narrative balladry, integrating her academic research and fieldwork into her music and storytelling performances. www.judithcohen.ca