Daniel Cohen

Daniel Cohen is the newly appointed General Music Director of the Staatstheater Darmstadt. He will start his first season with Brahms 1st Symphony and new productions of Un Ballo in Maschera and Rusalka.

Following his successful debut at the Staatsoper Berlin, conducting Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Cohen was invited back to the Staatsoper to conduct performances of Die Zauberflöte and Il barbiere di Siviglia as well as the revival of Klaus Guth’s production of Britten’s Turn of the Screw.

Cohen was a Kapellmeister at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Where he conducted numerous performances of such operas as Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Dornröschen, Lucia di Lammermoor, La Traviata and G.F.Haas' new opera Morgen und Abend.

Other operatic highlights include an acclaimed debut with the Canadian Opera Company with Christopher Alden’s production of La clemenza di Tito, a new production of Die Zauberflöte with Graham Vick at the Macerata Opera Festival. This season Cohen will make his debut with the Norwegian Opera in Oslo conducting Le Nozze di Figaro in Thaddeus Strassberger’s production, and will return to the Teatro Massimo di Palermo with Luigi Pizzi’s production of Idomeneo.

Cohen frequently works with the Israeli Opera where he conducted La Cenerentola, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Rigoletto, Otello, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Pique Dame, a Midsummer Night’s Dream and Wozzeck.

Cohen Symphonic work brought him to such orchestras as the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Dresdner Philharmoniker, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the RTÉ National Symphony, Dublin, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Israeli Philharmonic, and the Sinfonieorchester Basel.

Contemporary repertoire is of keen interest to Cohen, who was an assistant of Pierre Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy. He also pursued this passion as Artistic Director of the Gropius Ensemble, where he curates projects specializing in the synthesis of music and theatre, with actor and co-founder Itay Tiran. Cohen has also worked a number of times with members of the London Symphony Orchestra as part of their LSO Soundhub programme for young composers.

While still a student at the RAM in London, Cohen was appointed Music Director of the Jersey Chamber Orchestra where he was chief conductor for 10 seasons and worked with artists such as Nicola Benedetti, Sophie Bevan, Alison Balsom and Lawrence Zazzo.

Cohen was a Gustavo Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2013-14), and a conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Festival.

As a violinist Daniel Cohen was a long term member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra where he was also as Assistant Conductor to Daniel Barenboim, assisting him on such projects as the Beethoven symphony cycle and the recording of Boulez’s Derive II.