"Evidence abounded — as if the enthusiastic audience needed proof — at Boston’s Old South Church on June 7 that Alla Elana Cohen is a musical force to be reckoned with...I am in awe. The audience gave her a standing ovation. She earned every note of it."
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-- The Boston Musical Intelligencer

" Composer Alla Cohen is a pianist and music teacher whose deeply spiritual works are reaching a broader audience..."
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-- The Boston Globe

"...sophisticated harmonies and rhythms... blazed forth with utter clarity...'The Music of Alla Cohen' brings this intriguing and worthwhile composer before the public eye in a way that hopefully will lead to more concerts outside academia."
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-- Edge Boston

"Alla Elana Cohen may be the best classical musician you’ve never heard of," writes The Boston Phoenix in their recent coverage. Read more about Alla and review the Editors Pick concert coverage
-- Boston Phoenix

"Intriguing Instrumentation in Alla Cohen’s Works", The Boston Musical Intelligencer March 1, 2010. Read the full review here.

"Rhythm Divine", a feature in Bay Windows is currently available and chronicles the life and work of Alla.

"Pianist/composer Alla Cohen Scales New Heights" published in the Boston Herald is available here.

New England Conservatory feature article is also available here.

"The relentless intensity of Alla Cohen's music, its characteristic texture and powerful urgency, reveal a composer whose music emerges from the deepest sourses of passion and engagement. Her expressive dynamic is matched by her technical mastery and by her high-minded aesthetic. There is no compromise here. This is music, that simply must be."
-- Yehudi Wyner, internationally acclaimed composer and pianist, Pulitzer Prize in Music winner (2006), for 14 years professor and head of Composition Department at Yale University,professor of Cornell, Harvard and Brandeis Universities.

"It was a superb concert. Alla, you speak for all humanity! I remember the wonderful high treble register of the cello and piano duet with Sebastian Baverstam, then, the marimba and vibraphone duet, the brevity and the spice of the harmony; and then a wonderful string quartet about which I am still thinking; and I loved the piano solos and the conclusion of the concert: The Inner Temple, Sveti-tshoveli. My ears are still feasting on the concerts that you and Gunther Schuller did this week."
-- Ran Blake's impressions of the 02/12/09 concert at
Stanford Calderwood Pavilion

"It was so wonderful being in the Keller Room (NEC) last night for Alla Cohen's concert. Her music was glorious, cinematic, her spices, her rhythm, her harmonies, her ensemble - what a pleasure for the listener!"
-- Ran Blake, composer and pianist, McArthur Foundation Award (Genius'Grant) recipient, founder and for many years chair of Contemporary Improvisation Department of NEC

"I think Alla Cohen's music is very exciting, energetic, beautiful, sparkling, very classical, yet very contemporary."
-- Yuko Yoshikawa, internationally acclaimed marimba artist, prize-winner and finalist of a number of international and national competitions.

"Andrew Fenlon ...share(ed) his thoughts about film noir and the Incomparable Alla Cohen. We soon then (found) ourselves entering the dream world of Dorothy MCGuire. As you hear Alla Cohen's dissonant, spiky piano tones, you will see Helen's face transform from that of a happy bride to that of anguish..."
--Ran Blake, internationally acclaimed pianist and composer, who has performed throughout the US and Europe, McArthur Foundation Award (Genius' Grant) recipient, founder and for many years chair of Contemporary Improvisation Department of NEC

“It has been my great pleasure to become acquainted with a number of Alla Elana Cohen's compositions in various forms and with diverse instrumentations. I find her music to have a strikingly strong and expressive character. Her works are marked by an intriguing imagination and personal cachet, with sonorities, which are both imaginative and captivating. Miss Cohen's music sounds new, yet really accessible.”
--Eric Rosenblith, internationally acclaimed violinist, who has performed as a soloist and chamber player throughout North America, Europe, Asia; former Concertmaster of the Minneapolis and San Antonio Symphony Orchestra; was the Chairman of String Department at New England Conservatory for more than 25 years; Professor at Longy School of Music; Founder and Artistic Director of International Music Arts Institute of Fryeburg, Maine

“Cohen’s music [is] fresh and not fitting any mold. Her music comes from her gut. It’s personal and deeply emotional. Her music doesn’t sound like something else.”
--Mickey Katz, Richard C. and Ellen E. Paine chair for cello in the Boston Symphony Orchestra

“I have attended many concerts of Alla Cohen's music. I find it to be serious, genuine and at times very moving.”
--Gabriel Chodos, internationally acclaimed pianist, who has performed throughout the US, Europe, Israel, and Japan; for many years was the chairman of Piano Department of New England Conservatory; Professor at New England Conservatory; prize-winner of the Concert Artist Guild Auditions and the Michaels Competition.

“Alla Cohen's music is incomparably expressive, powerful, and innovative. Her works contain the highest level of artistry and inspirational power, leaving the listener with a striking and unforgettable impression.”
--Brian Buch, a composer and pianist-performer, prize-winner and finalist at numerous International and National Composers' Competitions, such as Queen Elisabeth Composers' Competition in Brussels,Belgium; International Composers' Competition in Haifa, Israel; Lepo Sumera Competition in Tallin, Estonia; International Robert Helps Prize (US); 1sr Prize winner at National MTNA Composers' Competition (US).

“I was so very fortunate to be able to attend a concert of the works of Alla Elana Cohen during June 2007 in Boston, MA.

It was a remarkably varied program, extremely well prepared and well performed by the many soloists, with Alla at the piano. My immediate thoughts were to the incredible contrasts in her compositions, yet an unfailing awareness to detail, structure, texture and orchestration. Her program was very well received by the large audience present. It was a very exciting evening of new music by an excellent composer, pianist and dedicated artist.

I am proud to be the publisher of "Perfect pitch for You" - Alla's brilliant pedegogical study on the subject.

I certainly look forward to publishing more of her work."

--Leonard Rhodes, distinguished pianist, organist, composer., Licentiate,Royal Academy of Music, London (UK), Founder and Executive Director of Pikes Peak Young Composers INC, Owner:Len Rhodes Music Publishing (ASCAP).

Beethoven, Boulanger, or both?
Joseph A. Bachour

A composer on the level of Mozart or Beethoven. A master teacher that gives birth to a new school of great composers. These two are one, and they both reside in Boston.

After hearing rehearsals for Alla Cohen’s upcoming concert at the Wimberly Theater at the BCA in the South End on February 12, I see that Boston has a great composer in its midst who has the potential to change the future of music. After studying composition with Alla Cohen, and watching her other composition students, I know that a new, great school of music is forming out of Boston, and it too will change the future of music.

“There is no compromise here. This is music that simply must be,” says Yehudi Wyner, another great Boston composer, about Alla Cohen’s music on her event poster, and he is right. This is music that comes from a complete musical master, and is itself complete. The power of Cohen’s music is at one and the same time intense and sublime. It is immensely engaging, very energetic and generously shares its deeply connected passion with the listener. It has qualities not recently seen in classical music. It is unique.

This is music that moves us again, and this is where music is today. In the great arch of classical music that stretches from the middle ages, this is the next segment. We see now, though, that the great arch is more like a sine curve, because it goes up again with Alla Cohen. As things dipped in the last century, Shostakovich died, experiments were tried, and searchings and systems plied a way toward obscurity. With Cohen, we see that we have passed the trough. The wave begins to gain again.

Coming from the Moscow Conservatory at a time when it was at its peak, Alla Cohen began to teach in Boston. The Moscow Conservatory was at that time the acropolis of music, and produced some of the greatest musical talents in history. Alla Cohen is one of those. She is a remarkable artist, musician and performer. One must really know and work with Alla, to realize that the level of her musical abilities is such that America has not often known. What is also remarkable is her ability to impart that talent to her composition students. The achievements of her composition students, young and old, are great enough to be considered a successful musical career. There is being created a great new school of composition from her studio here in Boston.

How sorry those people seem who squabbled over Beethoven’s affairs before and after his death. How strange that Mozart’s body was laid in a pauper’s grave. It seemed that great music was a natural part of the world, and that great composers and teachers would keep coming and giving. Would that the world treated its great musicians as the treasure they are. Grateful are we that they did keep coming, if even intermittently, and lucky are we to have a very talented and giving one right here in Boston.

 

• Alla Elana Cohen's recent concert, sponsored by Israeli Consulate at Goethe Institute, Boston, MA, received press coverage throughout the area. Read Recent Press>>
• Alla was recently featured in a Boston Globe video special:
  
• Ms. Cohen was also featured by WGHB. "The TV host, Jared Bowen, remarked that WGBH received many highly positive responses to his segment on Alla Cohen--a lot of good feedback, in which people praised both the music and Alla's sincerity and told the station how touched they were with it."