ThisWorldMusic

About Jeremy Cohen

ThisWorldMusic was founded by Boston-based composer, educator and percussionist Jeremy Cohen. A California native, he graduated with a B.A. in music from the University of California, Berkeley, receiving the school's prestigious Alfred M. Hertz Fellowship to study composition in New York City. He went on to attend the New England Conservatory of Music where, in addition to receiving a master's degree in jazz composition, he studied traditional West African drumming.

His passion for African music took him to the West African country of Ghana, where he studied traditional Ewe drumming and dancing under the world-renowned Agbeli brothers of Kopeyia. He is a member of the acclaimed Agbekor Drum and Dance Society, an ensemble led by pioneering ethnomusicologist and percussionist David Locke of Tufts University that is modeled after the community drum-and-dance clubs found throughout West Africa.

Offered the opportunity to create a new music program at the Umana Middle School, located in inner city East Boston, Mr. Cohen designed and implemented an innovative African drumming curriculum, established a multi-genre guitar program, and set up a state-of-the-art music technology lab.

He currently lives in Cambridge, MA where he continues to compose, teach, and drum. At the end of the 2007-08 school year he left his post as Music Director at the Umana M.S. to devote more time and energy to the mission of ThisWorldMusic: giving educators and young people the tools they need to bring the joy and power of African drumming into their classrooms. As part of that mission, he recently signed on as a consultant for MusicianCorps, a project of the Music National Service Initiative, for which he is also a trainer and mentor teacher.

Highlights of his work as a consultant and clinician include time spent as an adjunct faculty member at UMass Amherst (graduate level) and as a professional developer for school districts around the country, from Providence, RI to Oakland, CA.

B.A., University of California, Berkeley; M.M., New England Conservatory. Composition studies with Lee Hyla, Bob Brookmeyer, Ken Schaphorst. West African percussion studies with Emmanuel Agbeli, C.K. Ladzepko, Jerry Leake.