Alla Elana Cohen

Alla Elana Cohen is a distinguished composer, pianist, music theorist, and teacher who came to the United States in 1989 from Russia. Graduating from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory with the highest honors of distinction, Cohen lives in Boston and is a professor at Berklee College of Music.

As a composer, Cohen works in all genres of orchestral, chamber, and operatic music, and has an extensive catalogue of original compositions. Cohen’s music, often with the composer at the piano, is regularly performed and recorded with much success by internationally acclaimed performers, and garners great reviews and previews from media sources such as Fanfare Magazine, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston Phoenix, Boston Musical Intelligencer, ArtFuse, Cinemusical, Gapplegate, and others. Cohen was also interviewed and featured on WGBH TV and appeared in a featured video on boston.com. Radio programs about Cohen’s music were broadcast on the radio station Orpheus on the Russia State Center of Radio and TV Programs in Moscow and in the United States on the Russian-American Radio station United4:Good.

Cohen has released 9 albums of her compositions: Dedications; The Route of Compassion; The Road That Chooses Us; The Day of Atonement; Praise Him with Harp and Lyre, Praise Him with Strings and Flutes; Hoffmanniana; RED LILIES OF BELLS, GOLDEN LILIES OF BELLS, WHITE LILIES OF BELLS (RR7953); JUPITER DUO (RR7978); QUAESTIONES ET RESPONSA (RR8017)  (the last three were released under Ravello Records).

Cohen has been recognized as a composer by ASCAP, being an annual recipient of ASCAPLUS Awards, and has received commissions from the Music Teachers National Association. Cohen received the International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition awarded by the National Academy of Music in conjunction with the Municipal Conservatories of Neapolis and Sykies, Greece, in 2010. Cohen’s opera buffa, The Cunning Housekeeper, won the Director’s Choice Award organized by Boston Metro Opera in 2014.