Karl Georg Kohn is an American composer, teacher and pianist.

Biography

Kohn began playing the piano as a child in Vienna and, after he, at the age of 13, immigrated to the United States, continued his education in New York City and at Harvard (B.A., M.A.) where he studied composition with Walter Piston

Walter Piston

Walter Hamor Piston Jr., , was an American composer of classical music, music theorist and professor of music at Harvard University whose students included Leroy Anderson, Leonard Bernstein, and Elliott Carter....

, Irving Fine

Irving Fine

Irving Gifford Fine was an American composer. Fine's work assimilated neo-classical, romantic and, later, serial elements...

, and Randall Thompson

Randall Thompson

Randall Thompson was an American composer, particularly noted for his choral works.-Career:He attended Harvard University, became assistant professor of music and choir director at Wellesley College, and received a doctorate in music from the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music...

. He is W. M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Pomona College where he taught for over forty years. His students at Pomona included Douglas Leedy

Douglas Leedy

Douglas Leedy is an American composer, performer and music scholar.-Biography:Born in Portland, Oregon, Leedy studied with Karl Kohn at Pomona College and at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was in a composition seminar with membership including La Monte Young and Terry Riley...

 and David Noon and, privately, Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

 and John McGuire

John McGuire

John McGuire was a film actor of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. In many of his early films he was a leading man, however later in his career he was forced to play bit parts...

.

With his wife, Margaret Kohn, he has had a long career as a duo-pianist in the United States and in Europe, with a repertoire focused on major 20th century works by Debussy, Bartók, Berio, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Ligeti, Reich, and Boulez. Kohn played in the US premier of Boulez's Structures together with the composer.

Kohn's own works have been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic

Los Angeles Philharmonic

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California, United States. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from July through September...

 and Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestras, the Oakland Symphony, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra , based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, is the United States' only full-time professional chamber orchestra...

, on the San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco Symphony

The San Francisco Symphony is an orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980, the orchestra has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are part of the organization...

's Musica Viva series, at the Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles (Kohn served for two decades on the board of directors of the Monday Evening Concerts), and in concerts and broadcasts throughout the United States and abroad.

Compositions

Kohn has composed in all major genres of concert music. His work uses a unique collage-like style, in which individual instruments or groups of instruments project themselves from the surrounding events. His music cannot easily be immediately identified as either European or American in character, as it uses both the resources of his deep engagement in the European classical traditional as well as a more empirical approach to his materials.

Karl Kohn's principal publishers are Carl Fischer Music, New York, GunMar Music, Inc., (from Shawnee Press, Delaware Water Gap, PA) and Edition Contemp Art, Vienna.