Jacques Cohen- Biography

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Jacques read music at Oxford where he conducted the university orchestras 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.

Since 2005, Jacques has been Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Isis Ensemble which he formed from high-profile chamber musicians, soloists and leading players in the established UK orchestras, and which now regularly performs at London’s South Bank Centre and around England. 

Other orchestras that he has recently appeared with include the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, the Radio-Television Symphony Orchestra of Albania and the Sofia Soloists. Last year he conducted a series of concerts with the BBC Concert Orchestra and he has been a regular guest-conductor with the George Enescu Philharmonic in Bucharest since 2003. He is Principal Guest Conductor with the City of Oxford Orchestra and before that he worked with the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Bombay Chamber Orchestra and has guest conducted literally dozens of orchestras both in the UK and abroad. He has been Music Director of several major opera productions and was Music Director of the Seychelles International Music Festival. He is a regular guest conductor and visiting professor 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 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. His performances of the mainstream 19th and 20th century repertoire have been particularly acclaimed for their uniquely fresh and exciting quality and this has made him popular with both listeners and fellow musicians. A creative conductor, Jacques has enhanced his programmes with several arrangements and orchestrations (published by Norsk Musikforlag A/S) which include Brahms’ First Clarinet Sonata arranged for clarinet and strings and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition for strings.

He is 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. He is a passionate advocate of music by living composers, having a highly distinctive voice as a composer himself.

His own compositions, also published by Norsk Musikforlag A/S, include: Passion Fragment (The Denial of St Peter) commissioned and performed by Lloyd's Choir and the Isis Ensemble in 2009 and 2011; 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 is regularly performed both in the UK and abroad; Three Nottingham Dances, commissioned by the Nottingham Philharmonic; and a Tuba Concerto, commissioned by Oren Marshall. His award winning Elegy on a Floating Chord and Fantasias, Canons & Fugues, premiered by the Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra, have both been performed and broadcast several times internationally. Other commissions include Pantheon for the National Youth Wind Ensemble of Great Britain in 2005 and Castle Lament for the Primrose Piano Quartet which was recorded by them last year and is still being toured. 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. In 2010 he was commissioned to write the score for the film Jumpers.

Last month he completed a commission from Onyx Brass, Concertino and he has just finished a vast symphony for large orchestra entitled Adventures in Twilight.

Future plans include the completion of his one-act opera Magic Potions which was showcased at the Tête-à-tête Opera Festival in August 2010.