Jacques Cohen
>View Curriculum Vitae
Jacques is Music Director and Principal Conductor of one of the UK 's finest orchestras, the Isis Ensemble. He has recently conducted concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Sofia Soloists and the George Enescu Philharmonic in Bucharest. He is Principal Guest Conductor with the City of Oxford Orchestra and has worked with the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Bombay Chamber Orchestra and guest conducted literally dozens of orchestras both in the UK and abroad. He has been Music Director of several major opera productions and is Music Director of the Seychelles International Music Festival. He is a regular guest conductor at the Royal and Trinity Colleges of Music in London where he has conducted concerts and directed master classes.

He has recorded CDs for a variety of labels, notably Meridian, with whom he recently recorded the critically acclaimed Music for Strings CD with the Isis Ensemble. He has conducted performances of both his own music and that of other composers on radio and television including a momentous performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Three Screaming Popes for BBC Radio 3.

Jacques conducts an extremely wide repertoire from Monteverdi to the present day and is a passionate advocate of music by living composers. At the same time his performances of the mainstream classical and romantic repertoire have been widely acclaimed for their uniquely fresh and exciting quality and this has made him popular with both listeners and fellow musicians. He is also an enthusiastic communicator and has a growing reputation for his ability to explain music in an entertaining way and get audiences more involved in concerts.

His highly distinctive, passionate voice as a composer has won great admiration (and enjoyment!) from both listeners and fellow musicians. His compositions include: Passion Fragment (The Denial of St Peter) premiered by Isis Ensemble and Lloyd’s Choir with a quartet of international soloists to a rapturous reception in April; Yigdal, performed by, among others, the Yehudi Menuhin Orchestra (who also toured it in Europe and the UK), Sofia Soloists and Isis Ensemble (who also commercially recorded it); Quiet Music which has had over 20 performances with different orchestras; Three Nottingham Dances, commissioned by the Nottingham Philharmonic and performed to great acclaim; and a Tuba Concerto, commissioned by the great tuba player Oren Marshall. His Fantasias, Canons & Fugues, premiered by the Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra, and Elegy on a Floating Chord, winner of the Surrey Sinfonietta Composition Prize, have both been performed and broadcast several times internationally. Other commissions include the exciting Pantheon for the National Youth Wind Ensemble of Great Britain in 2005 and Castle Lament for the Primrose Piano Quartet due to be recorded and toured by them later this year. Other works for choir and orchestra include his large-scale Songs of Innocence and Experience premiered at St John Smith’s Square in 2005 and Jubilate, commissioned by Berkhamsted Choral Society. Other works have been performed at the South Bank in London and at the Royal Albert Hall and he has also written music for BBC television.

His arrangements and orchestrations include Brahms’ First Clarinet Sonata arranged for clarinet and strings and premiered in London by the Isis Ensemble with Sarah Williamson last year and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition for strings which was given a sensational premiere in July.

Future plans include the completion of a large-scale orchestral piece and his one-act opera Magic Potions.

Jacques read music at Oxford where he conducted the main university orchestra and performed several of his own compositions. When leaving Oxford, he was awarded the Conducting Scholarship at the Royal College of Music where he later won the Tagore Gold Medal, the College's prize for its most outstanding student. Since then he has won several other awards including the August Manns Conducting Prize and the Constant and Kit Lambert Award. He took First Prize in the British Reserve Conducting Competition and was also a prize winner in the Leeds Conductors' Competition.