Hello, my name is Dr Susanna Cohen

My years of experience as a professional bassoonist, together with my work developing methods for facilitating optimal performance and my music therapy training provide me with a rare combination of skills for helping musicians fulfil their potential.

Here are a few words about me:

Dr Susanna Cohen is a music performance coach, wellbeing researcher, and bassoonist. She was born in London, UK, received a BA in Psychology from Cambridge University UK and studied post-graduate Advanced Music Performance at the Royal Academy of Music, London. She has over 20 years of professional playing experience and worked as a freelance bassoonist playing with most of the major UK symphony and chamber orchestras before moving to Israel to become the Principal Bassoonist of the Israel Chamber Orchestra. At Bar Ilan University Israel she trained as a music therapist and completed her PhD investigating the relationship between music performance anxiety and flow and developing methods to help musicians reduce music performance anxiety and to perform optimally. Her work in this field has been published internationally. She continued to investigate musicians’ wellbeing as a post-doctoral Visiting Research Fellow at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester UK. She is currently a wellbeing and aging researcher at Bar Ilan University, and has a private practice helping musicians of all ages and stages to develop performance skills and overcome music performance anxiety.

I believe that we can all change, acquire new skills and overcome and deal with difficulties. I am deeply committed to helping musicians – whether professionals, students, amateurs or children – to develop the skills and confidence to play their best.