Orchestra Conductor, The Great Music Series & State of Art 

By Dayna Wilkinson

“I’m already in the hot seat as a twenty-eight year old conductor, but I feel incredible joy at the insanely high level of playing and extreme responsiveness of a professional orchestra.”

“Both my parents are professional musicians,” says Yuga Cohler AB '11. “My mother’s a violinist and my father’s a clarinetist so I took up those instruments—it didn’t go well.” Fortunately, those were minor bumps in the road for Yuga, who started studying piano and music theory at age three. By age twelve, his primary instruments were oboe and piano.

“Shortly after starting on the oboe, I went to a music camp called Greenwood,” he says.  “That’s when I first discovered people my age who took music seriously.  It became a social thing—people I liked were also playing music, which made me like doing it more. By the time I was in my teens, I realized music was really great.” 

Yuga was interested in many different musical genres. “I really got into Eminem, then the underground hip hop scene. Also J-pop, Top 40 and musical theater for a while. Plus I listened to tons of classical records from my dad’s collection.”