Biography

Tamara Cashour is an award-winning ASCAP composer of chamber music (instrumental/vocal), choral ,music, musical theatre, opera, solo piano and organ music and theatre incidental music.  Her awards include:  2022 WINNER:  THE AMERICAN PRIZE IN PROFESSIONAL CHORAL COMPOSITION (3rd Place), as well as MUSIC/SOCIAL JUSTICE RELATED (2nd Place) for her work FORBEARANCE, which raises consciousness to Bird Extinction; 2020 BRONX COUNCIL ON THE ARTS GRANT WINNER also for FORBEARANCE (film/music); 2015 BCA BRIO AWARD FOR MUSICAL COMPOSITION; INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE OF WOMEN IN MUSIC 2015 INTERNATIONAL ONLINE CONFERENCE FEATURED SCORE;  and  2008 NY TREBLE SINGERS  "FOR WOMEN ONLY" CHORAL COMPETITION (First Place) for her comic deconstructionist burlesque GIRLY HURLY BURLY, an SSAA choral setting of the witches text from Shakespeare's MACBETH.  Her tandem incidental pieces for SATB:  FULL FATHOM FIVE and FIE ON SINFUL FANTASY, were featured in the theatre-opera production BLOODY FIRE UNCHASTE DESIRE==a joint production of OperAvant and Lovestreet Theatre--for which Tamara served as musical director, pianist, conductor and featured soprano. 

​

Cashour's compositions have premiered locally in New York City, nationally and internationally, in such venues as:  DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Symphony Space, St. Peters Citicorp Center, Two Lands-One Voice Festival in Rome, Italy, European-American Musical Alliance in Paris, France (Schola Cantorum); Columbia University, New York University, National Opera Center, TheatreLab and many others.  Of a recent concert of her choral works at Church of the Transfiguration in Manhattan, critic Jean Ballard-Terepka wrote: 

​

"Tamara Cashour’s Five Introits followed. Conceived for the brief, crucial and defining introductory moment of Protestant services that open the liturgy, these five extremely short works were jewels of effective musical writing: each work captured the essence of the sacred text coherently and immediately. As a Hart Longs was a paradigm of spiritual yearning; Be Strong and of Good Courage! was operatic in its noble vigor; O Sing Unto the Lord a New Song danced." ---Jean Ballard Terepka for Theatrescene

​

Tamara Cashour holds a BA in Music Theory/Columbia University; MA in Interdisciplinary Studies (Musical Direction/Avant-garde theatre studies/New York University;  and an MFA in Musical Composition from Vermont College of Fine Arts.  She has additionally studied at the Juilliard School of Music (Evening Division--Composition and Orchestration) and at EAMA in Paris, France (European American Music Academy).

 

Listen/view at:

​

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt-_NRuWJiyW12d0QoRuxjw?view_as=subscriber

​

https://soundcloud.com/tamara-cashour

​