Westfield Symphony Receives Major Grant from Dodge Foundation for World Premiere Performance

WESTFIELD, NJ – The Westfield Symphony Orchestra has received a $20,000 grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge in support of the commissioning and world premiere performance of a new work about the life of inventor Thomas Edison. The grant provides for $10,000 in outright funds and $10,000 in the form of a Challenge Grant through which The Dodge Foundation will match dollar-for-dollar additional funds raised for the project up to $10,000.

Edison Invents is an exciting new composition by New Jersey composer Robert Cohen for baritone soloist and symphony orchestra, uniquely combining theatrical and symphonic elements to dramatize the life of Thomas Edison. An embodiment of the very best of contemporary American music, it is a highly accessible work that will touch its audiences both by melding the Broadway tradition with the classical genre as well as through a libretto based on the life of an American genius whose work literally changed the world. The world premiere performance will take place on Saturday, April 9, 2005 at the Union County Arts Center in Rahway, NJ.

Edison Invents, inspired by the biography Edison: Inventing the Century by New Jersey author and scholar Neil Baldwin, brings together one of New Jersey’s critically acclaimed orchestras, a renowned New Jersey composer, and a prolific librettist to celebrate the life of Edison, who lived and worked in New Jersey. A unique combination of the Broadway one-man show and the orchestral genre, Edison Invents is theatrically sophisticated and musically significant, satisfying both the symphony audience and the Broadway theatergoer. The music is tonal and melodic with an authentically American sound, drawing on a range of media and combining Broadway with symphonic influences to create a unique musical language.

Westfield Symphony Board President Norman L. Luka, MD thanked The Dodge Foundation for their contribution. “Edison Invents is a very important artistic and educational project and the centerpiece of the Westfield Symphony’s 22^nd Season. We are very grateful to The Dodge Foundation not only for their significant gift but for the faith in the Westfield Symphony that the Challenge Grant represents,” said Luka.

The Westfield Symphony will actively solicit donations from individuals, corporations and foundations as part of the Dodge Foundation/Edison Invents Challenge Campaign. Donations may be sent to: Westfield Symphony Orchestra, 224 E. Broad Street, Westfield, NJ 07090. All donations should be clearly earmarked for the Dodge Foundation/Edison Invents Challenge Campaign. To charge a donation to your credit card or for further information, please call the Westfield Symphony at (908) 232-9400.

The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation was established in 1974 through the foresight and generosity of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge. The Foundation’s five areas of giving are the Arts, Education, Morris County Initiatives, Environmental Issues, and the Welfare of Animals. The mission of the Foundation is to support and encourage those educational, cultural, social and environmental values that contribute to making our society more humane and our world more livable.

The Westfield Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1983 by a group of Westfield citizens who believed that the expression of history and culture through the performance of symphonic music adds value to the quality of community life. Its mission is to promote the world’s legacy of symphonic and operatic music to audiences, involving them in a diversity of professional musical experiences including performance, education and mentoring.

Composer Robert S. Cohen, a resident of Upper Montclair, co-authored the book and composed the score for the musical Suburb, whose recent production at Off-Broadway’s York Theatre Company earned nominations for Best Musical from the Outer Critics Circle, the Drama League, and the Lucille Lortel Awards and was the recipient of the 2000 Richard Rodgers Award. He has served as resident composer for the National Shakespeare Company, the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, and the Manitoba Theater Center. His musical God in Concert: One Night Only received a workshop at the Second Stage in New York under the direction of Lynn Taylor-Corbett (Swing).

Librettist Herschel Garfein wrote the libretto and directed Robert Aldridge’s Elmer Gantry for the Boston Lyric Opera. Currently, he is working on the music and libretto for the operatic adaptation of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. He wrote lyrics and music for Mythologies, a dance trilogy for Mark Morris performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in New York City and in Brussels, and for Sueños, a musical for Mabou Mines. He has also written libretti for Larger than Life (Manhattan Theatre Club), and Signs and Wonders (NYU Music and Theatre Departments).