Estar Cohen Project; The jazz-inspired music group will host a concert on Dec. 5 at the Toledo Museum of Art

Modern jazz-inspired music group, Estar Cohen Project, will host a concert to promote the release of the group’s debut album, “Waiting for Dawn.”
Estar Cohen, a fourth-year vocal major at the University of Toledo, said the main focus of the Estar Cohen project is live, improvised music with empathetic value.
“We spend a lot of time on our choice of music because we want to make sure it’s something that we not only really enjoy playing, but something we thoroughly connect with,” she said.
As a lyricist and composer with folk influences, Cohen strives to be as much a storyteller as musician.
“I always want to have some sort of a compelling story for the audience to latch onto,” she said.
Becca Stevens is one singer-songwriter Cohen said she is inspired by, along with the well-known folk artist, Joni Mitchell.
“Every song is very cinematic, you can kind of see a movie when you’re listening to us play,” said Josh Silver, local musician and pianist in the group, agreeing with Cohen. “It’s like we’re painting a picture.”
The group drummer, Travis Aukerman, fourth-year percussion major, said the focus of the group is Cohen’s music.
“She’s inspired by music that’s very earthy,” Aukerman said. “It’s music that has roots in folk, but is extremely inspired by classical and jazz.”
Cohen said her first influence with music was her older siblings.
“They wrote music and they were playing all over Toledo when I was very young,” she said. “So, I followed suit with that and started writing my own songs when I was quite young.”
Cohen also said at 16 years old she had the opportunity to sit in and play with Claude Black and Clifford Murphy at the Murphy Club.
“That was really the first time I heard live jazz, and that was really special. It was like a turning point for where I went with music,” Cohen said.
Like Cohen, Silver said his family — particularly his parents — played a large role in his musical interest.
“Musicals, movie soundtracks, stuff like that are my first musical memories,” Silver said. “There was a keyboard in the house too, and I remember I used to try to pick out melodies that I would hear in movies.”
When Silver was in elementary school he would play with the piano before music class which caught his music teacher’s attention.
After taking lessons with his teacher he eventually went to Toledo School for the Arts where he had the opportunity to play in a jazz combo.
“That was a big milestone in my life, playing jazz with a larger ensemble,” Silver said.
Aukerman said his passion for music started very young, just like his bandmates.’
“I can remember back to when I was young having a fascination with sounds,” he said. “I would sit in the bathroom and just clap, I was obsessed with the way it would ring.”
The next step Aukerman took with music was when he was in his junior high. He said he remembers pretending to play drums on the couch in his basement for an imaginary audience of thousands.
“I got my first drumset when I was a freshman, and once I got that, that was where it all changed,” he said.
It was his parents, Aukerman said, who gave him the initial time he needed to develop musically.
“That’s where I went from that kid who was clapping in the bathroom to a kid who had a bunch of different sounds to hit and listen to,” he said.
Aukerman also said all of his music professors at UT have been strongly influential in helping him develop his own voice in music.
“I came into school a drummer, and they taught me how to be a musician,” he said.“Olman Piedra helped me with solo stuff, finding my voice, and Gunnar Mossblad helped me with how I fit into a group, while Norm Damschroder taught me the foundations of jazz.”
“And Jay Weik, he’s very good at giving you extremely important advice in a small amount of time,” he said.
In agreement with Aukerman, Cohen said, “The whole jazz faculty in some way have greatly affected me in terms of how I think about music, and how I think about writing and arranging and improvising.”
Both Cohen and Aukerman said their recent studies with Tad Weed, a jazz professor in the music department, have moved them in meaningful ways musically.
Cohen said that studying singing and arranging and composition with Weed has “been really profoundly significant.”
Aukerman said Weed is “extremely inspirational” in his compositional abilities.
“Everything I have I owe to him,” Aukerman said.
Overall, Cohen said, all that she has studied with her professor has been nothing but beneficial to her career.
“Everything that I learn in here I apply to what we’re doing as a group, professionally,” she said.
The Estar Cohen Project concert will be Dec. 5, 6:30-8:30 p.m., at the Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavillion. Admission is free.