Jacques Cohen
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Jacques is Music Director and Principal Conductor of one of the UK 's finest orchestras, the Isis Ensemble. He has recently conducted concerts with Romania 's premier orchestra, the George Enescu Philharmonic in Bucharest and is Principal Guest Conductor with the City of Oxford Orchestra . He 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 also been Music Director of several major opera productions and was recently appointed Music Director of the Seychelles International Music Festival.

He has recorded CDs for a variety of labels, notably Meridian, with whom he recently recorded the sensational 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 many compositions include: Yigdal , premiered by the Isis Ensemble last year and subsequently performed by the Yehudi Menuhin Orchestra both here and abroad; Quiet Music which is regularly performed by British and American orchestras; Three Nottingham Dances , commissioned by the Nottingham Philharmonic and performed to great acclaim; a Tuba Concerto , commissioned by the great tuba player Oren Marshall; and a one-act opera, Magic Potions. 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 in Europe and in America . Serenata Malinconica for Violin, Viola or Cello and small orchestra has become very popular. His large-scale Songs of Innocence and Experience for chorus and orchestra was premiered at St John Smith's Square in 2005. Serenade for Saxophones was commissioned by the Northern Saxophone Quartet the same year, as was the very exciting Pantheon by the National Youth Wind Ensemble. He has also written several award winning works for choir including Jubilate, commissioned by Berkhamsted Choral Society and a set of Christmas choral pieces, known collectively as Cohen's Carols . 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.

Future projects include a new major commission for choir and orchestra for 2009, controversially setting part of the St Matthew Passion , and a huge orchestral piece, Adventures in the Twilight Zone which Jacques hopes to complete next year. He is also arranging Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition for strings and Brahms's First Clarinet Sonata as a concerto for the soloist Sarah Williamson.

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, Surrey Sinfonietta Composition 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.