enthusiasm for medieval and Renaissance music continues to be reflected in recent projects, including a series of commissioned programs (2001–2008) for the Gardner Museum, Boston, around Italian repertoires of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His forays into baroque repertoire have been more episodic but have attracted widespread comment and attention: the first early-instruments recording of Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas"(Harmonia Mundi, 1980), and a well-received recording of Jean Gilles' "Requiem" (Erato, 1990), among others. From 1986 forward, many of his new Eurocentric projects dealt with music of the Middle Ages, including a medieval retelling of the "Tristan and Iseult" legend (Erato, Grand Prix du Disque, 1987). Work in early American music Cohen's interest in American vernacular traditions dates from his childhood lessons on folk guitar, and his experience in later student years as a jazz bassist. He was introduced to southern shapenote tunebooks by his mentor at Harvard University, the composer Randall Thompson, and by Alan Lomax's field recordings of Sacred Harp sings in Alabama in 1942. Cohen later travelled to the South on several occasions to participate in Sacred Harp sings and conventions. His first program with the Boston Camerata involving extensive treatment of early American oral and written sources was "The Roots of American Music" (1976), released as an Advent cassette, and later re-recorded (1986) as "New Britain". The commercial success of this last recording, released after a lapse of several years by the French label Erato, led Cohen and the Erato label to record a series of early American programs with the Boston Camerata, including "The American Vocalist", "Trav'ling Home", and "Liberty Tree". For the 1992 celebration of the Columbus year, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival invite Cohen and the Camerata to prepare a program of early Hispanic repertoire from the New World. This project became "Nueva España", recorded by Erato and subsequently one of the Boston Camerata's most requested touring programs. Cohen, the Boston Camerata, and the Shakers Informed by Shaker music scholar, Roger Hall, of the Shaker library at Sabbathday Lake, Maine, and its extensive musical holdings, Cohen traveled to that still-functioning community to do research on Shaker manuscript sources. He and his wife, soprano Anne Azéma, also began an enduring personal relationship with the members of the community, who agreed to record and perform their music in the company of the Boston Camerata and collaborating choirs. Two CDs of Shaker song (Simple