Douglas Cohen is a composer based in New York City.

He has collaborated extensively with artists in other fields, including California performance artist Dee McMillin, Texas sculptor James Magee and New York film artist Lawrence Brose. Cohen studied composition with Louis Andriessen, Morton Feldman, Mauricio Kagel, Mel Powell, David Felder, Lukas Foss, Stephen Mosko, Leonard Stein and Morton Subotnick. He has completed studies in music at the California Institute of the Arts (M.F.A.) and the State University of New York at Buffalo (Ph.D.) where he held the Varèse Fellowship in Music.

His compositions have been performed by notable musicians including the California E.A.R. Unit and the pianist Anthony de Mare. In 1990 and 1992 he was composer in residence at the International Courses for Contemporary Music in Darmstadt, Germany.

He is a specialist in American experimental music with particular attention to the work of John Cage, Morton Feldman and Pauline Oliveros.

He co-created and produced the evening length intermedia work "imusicircus" at Experimental Intermedia in New York and LACE Gallery in Los Angeles (later with the California EAR Unit at the L.A. County Museum of Art) as "City Circus" events for the John Cage exhibition "Rolywholyover a Circus."

He was recently awarded a composition commission through the Individual Artists Program of the New York State Council on the Arts for the score to Lawrence Brose’s next film, Crossing.

Cohen was an early advocate for digital media on the internet. He organized the NewMusNet Conference of Arts Wire with Pauline Oliveros and later worked for Arts Wire as their Systems Coordinator. Currently he is on the composition faculty of the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music of the City University of New York.

information @ sternklangdogs.org

With Noah Creshevsky at Klavierhaus, IEAMF concert (2005)
photo by Nancy Hager