Steve Cohen

Active as a soloist and chamber performer and throughout the U.S. and around the world, Steve Cohen is professor emeritus of clarinet at Northwestern University. Not one to sit on his laurels, he has been teaching and playing in the New York area since retiring to live in Connecticut. In the fall of 2022, he performed and taught in Seoul, Korea once again.

In the fall of 2023, he will be teaching at the Special Music School at the Kaufmann Center and has recently played recitals and given master classes in Utah for the Utah clarinet festival as well as in Orlando at the University of Central Florida.

He will also teach and perform again at the Atlantic Music Festival in Maine this summer. Formerly principal clarinetist with the New Orleans Symphony, Cohen joined that orchestra in 1975 and remained as principal clarinet with its successor, the Louisiana Philharmonic through May of 2004.

He has been featured as concerto soloist with that orchestra many times and at the Brevard Music Center, where he played principal clarinet for 43 summers from 1979-2021. He has also performed as principal clarinet with the Texas Opera Theater, Seoul Philharmonic, Music of the Baroque orchestra, and with the Chicago Symphony, Chicago Lyric Opera, and as a chamber musician throughout Chicago.

He has given master classes and recitals in Thailand, Korea, China, Taiwan, Europe and throughout the U.S. Guest teaching includes the Oberlin Conservatory, Juilliard, Yale, Hartt, USC, Indiana University, University of Texas at Austin among others. Previous professor at the Cincinnati Conservatory and LSU, he is an exclusive artist/clinician for Buffet clarinets and an exclusive Legere reed artist.

He, along with his colleagues in the New Orleans Symphony hosted the 2001 ICA Convention in New Orleans. New York City born, his teachers include, Loren Kitt, Larry McDonald, Karl Leister and Robert Marcellus."