Daniel Cohen has been the General Music Director of the Staatstheater Darmstadt since the 2018/2019 season. From 2004 to 2014, he was the Music Director of the Jersey Chamber Orchestra and Artistic Director of the Gropius Ensemble, with which he created projects exploring the boundary between music and theater.

Cohen maintains regular connections with the opera houses in Berlin. In the 2015/2016 season, he was engaged as a conductor at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he conducted numerous performances, including “Così fan tutte”, “Don Giovanni”, and “La Traviata”, and has since regularly returned to the house. The premiere of Giorgio Battistelli's “Il Teorema di Pasolini” in June 2023 has been celebrated in the press. The Deutsche Bühne writes: “Conductor Daniel Cohen and the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper perform (...) at the quality level of an international top-class opera house.”

He made his debut at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in the 2016/17 season with Stravinsky's “Le sacre du printemps” and returned for productions such as “Il barbiere di Siviglia” and a revival of Benjamin Britten's production of “Turn of the Screw”. Further invitations have led him to the Canadian Opera Company with David Alden, the Israeli Opera Tel Aviv, the Teatro Massimo, and the Norske Opera Oslo (Figaro, 2019).

In the summer of 2019, Daniel Cohen made his debut with the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra at the Bregenz Festival in a production of Massenet’s “Don Quichotte“ directed by Mariame Clément. The production, which was released on DVD and broadcast by the BBC, was awarded the Austrian Music Theater Prize 2020 for “Best Overall Opera Production”. In 2021, he returned to the Bregenz Festival to conduct “Rigoletto”, and in 2022, he successfully led the rehearsal phase and concert of the newly established “Orchesterakademie Bregenz” in collaboration with the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra.

In the symphonic realm, he has conducted, among others, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Camerata Salzburg, and the Basel Symphony Orchestra. One of the focal points of his repertoire is contemporary music: from 2011 to 2013, he participated in the “Lucerne Festival Academy Composer Project” led by Pierre Boulez.

In his first seasons in Darmstadt, he devoted himself not only to repertoire classics by Mahler, Beethoven, and Mozart but also to works of composers of the “Darmstädter Moderne”, including Maderna, Boulez and Varèse. His opera projects have so far included such productions as “Un ballo in maschera”, “Fidelio“, “Lohengrin”, “La bohème”, “Rusalka“, Lilli Boulanger’s “Faust et Hélène (directed by Mariame Clément) and “Le Sacre du printemps“ with the Hessisches Staatsballett. Cohen was also instrumental in the founding of the „Barockfest Darmstadt” which has included artists such as Avi Avital, Isabelle Faust, Sonia Prina and Sergio Azzollini and which focuses on the tradition of Baroque music in Darmstadt and the court chapel.

In the 2023/24 season, he will return to the Orchesterakademie of the Bregenz Festival. At the Staatstheater Darmstadt highlights will include new productions Offenbach's “Hoffmanns Erzählungen” and Strauss' “Elektra”, as well as symphony concerts.

After his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, Daniel Cohen was a long-term member of the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra as a violinist, where he assisted Daniel Barenboim in many concerts and recordings. In the 2013/14 season, Daniel served as a “Dudamel Fellow” at the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. A year later, he was a “Conducting Fellow” at the Tanglewood Music Festival.

2023 / 2024