John Koen was born in Dallas in 1966. He has been a member of The Philadelphia Orchestra since 1990. was appointed Acting Assistant Principal Cello in 2011 and was promoted to Acting Associate Principal Cello for the 2015-16 season. Mr. Koen graduated from The Curtis Institute of Music after studies with David Soyer and Peter Wiley, the two cellists of the Guarneri Quartet.
He has performed with orchestras across the US and in Europe, as well as many recitals and chamber music concerts. Some of these were as a guest with the Sofia Philharmonic Quartet and a recital under the patronage of His Excellency the British Ambassador to Bulgaria. Some highlights of his concertante repertoire include Strauss’ Don Quixote, Messiæn Tout un monde lointain…, and concertos by Dvořák, Prokofiev, Schumann, Shostakovich, and Tchaikovsky.
Mr. Koen became the Music Director of the Philadelphia Chamber Ensemble in 2023, after having performed with the Ensemble for over 25 years. As a member of The Philadelphia Orchestra, he has collaborated in chamber music with artists such as Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Kirill Gerstein, Horácio Gutierrez, Stephen Hough, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, as well as with many colleagues of The Philadelphia Orchestra. These concerts have ranged across the East coast of America to South America as well as having been a founding member of “Quarto Quartet” in Bulgaria. He is also a member the Philadelphia Piano Quartet and performed extensively with the Network for New Music. He is featured on many recordings of these ensembles.
Specially featured chamber music performances under the auspices of The Philadelphia Orchestra have included the Schubert Cello Quintet with David Soyer, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time with Music Director Christoph Eschenbach, and the Schumann Piano Quintet with Maestro Wolfgang Sawallisch, which was featured and broadcast during the Opening Week Festival in 1993.
Mr. Koen was appointed and Artist-in-Residence of The Boyer College of Music in 2006, teaching chamber music and cello. He gives master classes around the world, from Seoul to Sofia and across the United States. He has also taught at Swarthmore College and The College of New Jersey.
John Koen’s performance of Robert Maggio’s Winter Toccata for unaccompanied cello, which he commissioned, was nominated for Best Instrumental Performance in the 1998 Gay/Lesbian American Music Awards. He is also featured on Ingrid Arauco’s disc Invocation with the cello sonata she wrote for him and Charles Abramovic, and Mr. Koen premiered her Suite for Cello at Haverford College in November, 2016.
As a student John Koen performed in the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Orchestra as Solo-Cellist on European Tours with Maestros Leonard Bernstein, Sergiu Celibidache and Christoph Eschenbach, including a television broadcast throughout Eastern Europe from Gorky Park in Moscow with Leonard Bernstein in 1988, and with the Salzau Quartett in a performance for President Richard von Weizsäcker of West Germany.
In addition to his busy performing and teaching schedule, he has devoted significant service as a leader of the musicians of the orchestra, and in 2004 received the C. Hartmann Kuhn Award, given to “a musician who has shown both musical ability and enterprise of such character as to enhance the musical standards and reputation of The Philadelphia Orchestra.”
His other interests include studying languages, cooking, reading, traveling and playing with his two cats.
