Acclaimed Pianist Zhenni Li-Cohen Joins the Department of Music

The Department of Music is delighted to announce that Zhenni Li-Cohen will be joining the department as Associate Professor of Piano beginning July 1, 2023.

About Zhenni Li-Cohen (supplied):

Hailed as “…an artist of tremendous conviction, who fascinates even as she provokes… “ by Gramophone Magazine, “…a thrillingly good pianist…” by The New Yorker and for her "...big, gorgeous tone and a mesmerizing touch" by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Ms. Li-Cohen has performed in such notable venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, WQXR’s Greene Space in New York, the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia’s Kimmel Performing Arts Center, the Helsinki Music Centre in Finland, the Grieghallen in Norway, and the Berliner Philharmonie in Germany. She has appeared as a soloist with ensembles such as the Bergen Philharmonic, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the Knoxville, Fairbanks, Bucks County, Dominican Republic and Johns Hopkins Symphony Orchestras and recently released her second album for the Steinway & Sons label featuring works by Sergei Bortkiewicz (A letter); her third and fourth albums featuring Beethoven (Beethoven’s Apotheosis), and traditional Chinese works (Legend of the Phoenix Queen) are upcoming. Ms. Li-Cohen has garnered worldwide recognition as the winner of the New York Concert Artists Worldwide Debut Audition, Astral Artist’s National Auditions and the Grieg International Competition in Norway. Ms. Li-Cohen holds a Bachelor and Master of Music degree, both on a full scholarship, from The Juilliard School, under the tutelage of Seymour Lipkin and Joseph Kalichstein. After obtaining her Artist Diploma with Peter Frankl at Yale School of Music, she completed her doctorate studies at the McGill School of Music under Dr. Stéphane Lemelin.

She is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Opus 71 Concerts, a multimedia concert series near New York’s Lincoln Center. In her spare time, she enjoys learning jazz and new languages, looking forward to becoming pentalingual, traveling and meeting people of different cultures. Zhenni Li-Cohen is a Steinway Artist.

Please join us in welcoming Zhenni to the University of Alberta Department of Music!