Mark Kosower

American cellist Mark Kosower has achieved significant careers in both the U.S. and Germany. Kosower was born December 17, 1976, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to cellist and educator Paul Kosower and teacher Janet Kosower. He took up the cello at age one and a half, and after studies with his father, went on to work with two of the top teachers on the American cello scene: Janos Starker at the University of Indiana (from which he graduated in 1998) and Joel Krosnick of the Juilliard Quartet. He earned a master’s degree from Juilliard in 2001. In the mid-2000s decade Kosower pursued a bicontinental career, holding the position of principal cello in Germany’s Bamberg Symphony Orchestra while teaching cello and chamber music at the San Francisco Conservatory for part of that period. In July of 2010 Kosower assumed the position of principal cellist for the Cleveland Orchestra, which had been vacant since 2003. Kosower has concertized extensively, both as a concerto soloist and as a chamber musician. In the former capacity he has appeared with many of the major American symphony orchestras, including those in Detroit, Buffalo, Houston, Seattle, and Minneapolis-St. Paul (the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra), as well as with ensembles worldwide that include the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the China National Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, the Orchestre de Paris, and the KwaZulu Natal Philharmonic Orchestra in Durban, South Africa. Kosower has given solo recitals at New York’s Kennedy Center, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, as well as at halls on three other continents. He has toured with his father and sister as a member of the Dolce Cello Trio. Kosower’s recordings include one of the Ginastera Cello Concerto with the Bamberg Symphony, released on the Naxos label in 2011. He is married to pianist Jee-Won Oh, a fellow Indiana graduate. ~ James Manheim