What are they doing now?

Rajiv Joseph '92 is an American playright. In April 2008, he was awarded the Vineyard Theatre's Paula Vogel Award which is given to emerging playwrights, and his play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was chosen by the NEA as one of two outstanding new American plays (which receive grants of $90,000 each). The Center Theater Group in Los Angeles will produce Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo as part of its 2009 season. It is a darkly comedic drama, which takes the audience to the streets of Baghdad where the lives of two American soldiers, an Iraqi translator, and a tiger intersect, changing each other’s lives forever.

Rajiv received his B.A. in creative writing from Miami University, served in the Peace Corps for three years, and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2004. His other plays include Huck & Holden, All This Intimacy and Animals Out of Paper.

David Binnig '97 is playing with three groups in Portland, Oregon. SubAtomic is a live electronic Improv Quartet that fuses jazz, breakbeat, drum-&-bass, and edgy downtempo grooves. The group started in March 2007. According to the group’s web site, www.subatomicpdx.com, “Dave Binning plays trumpet into effects pedals creating on-the-fly loops that weave a smooth ambient texture and will carry you through space and time.” David also plays trumpet for Book of Sands, a group whose “improvisations combine the hypnotic textures of early minimalism, the experimentalism of Krautrock, and the cyclical rhythms of Hindustani music with gradually evolving melodies that draw on modal jazz.” Visit http://www.myspace.com/bookofsand.

Violinist Diana Cohen '97 is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she was the recipient of the 2000 Jerome Gross Prize in violin and a winner of the Darius Milhaud competition. Her principal teachers were Donald Weilerstein, William Preucil, and Paul Kantor. At the age of 23 she was appointed concertmaster of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, a position she held for three seasons. Diana performs regularly with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the International Sejong Soloists and is a frequent substitute with the New York Philharmonic. She was concertmaster of the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. She is a member of the Knights, a fellowship of young musicians of diverse and accomplished backgrounds who come together for the shared joy of musical exploration. They have performed as soloists with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Israel Philharmonic, to name a few, and appeared at the world's most prestigious music festivals, including Marlboro, Tanglewood, Verbier, Stillwater, Lucerne, Salzburg and Mortizburg.Visit www.knightsmusic.net to learn more about the Knights and Diana.

Alexander Cohen '03 is currently a member of CityMusic Cleveland and the West Virginia Symphony, where he holds the position of principal timpanist. Alex is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, and studied with Paul Yancich, principal timpanist of the Cleveland Orchestra. During the 2007-08 season, Alexander acted as the principal timpanist of the San Diego Symphony and the San Diego Opera. He has also served as timpanist of the Marlboro Festival Orchestra, Mainly Mozart Festival, National Repertory Orchestra, New York String Orchestra and Aspen Festival Orchestra, as well as the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen. He performs regularly with the San Diego Symphony and the Charlotte Symphony and has performed in the Rocky River Chamber Series and at Steinway Hall in New York as a chamber musician. Learn more at www.CityMusicCleveland.org.

Keep that information about our Heights graduates coming! Email me at lita@valancy.com.