June 4, Richard Kogan, Practicing concert pianist and psychiatrist
The Mind and Music of Scott Joplin
Richard Kogan is a distinguished concert pianist, psychiatrist and storyteller. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Artistic Director of the Weill Cornell Music and Medicine Program. He has been praised for his “exquisite playing” by the New York Times, and The Boston Globe wrote that “Kogan has somehow managed to excel at the world’s two most demanding professions.”
Dr. Kogan has gained renown for lecture-recitals that explore the role of music in healing and the influence of psychological forces and medical illness on the creative output of composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein and Scott Joplin.
He has been the recipient of numerous awards, and he has recorded the DVD “Music and the Mind” for Yamaha. Yo-Yo Ma wrote of this DVD, “I came away from this extraordinary lecture and performance deeply moved by a fascinating presentation that only Richard Kogan, psychiatrist and concert pianist, can deliver.”
Friends since their days together at the Julliard School and Harvard University, Kogan has been part of a piano trio whose other members are violinist Lynn Chang and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.