Ann Marie Harr
James E. Smith Midwest Conference on World Affairs coordinator, 308.865.8944
“Music and Medicine: George Gershwin” is the theme of a piano performance at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 7, in the University of Nebraska at Kearney Fine Arts Recital Hall.
Pianist Richard Kogan, a concert pianist and physician, will perform in conjunction with the 2005 James E. Smith Conference on World Affairs. The concert is free and open to the public.
Dr. Kogan, who has had a distinguished career both as a concert pianist and as a physician, has gained international renown for his groundbreaking work on the role of music in healing and on how the medical and psychiatric illnesses of the great composers influenced their creative output. Dr. Kogan is the recipient of the 2005 Artsgenesis Creative Achievement Award and his work forms the basis for the new Yamaha DVD series titled “Richard Kogan : Music and the Mind.”
He has been praised for his “exquisite, eloquent, and compelling playing” by the New York Times,and the Boston Globe wrote that “Kogan has somehow managed to excel at the world’s two most demanding professions.”
Dr. Kogan is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and is affiliated with Weill-Cornell Medical College as director of its Human Sexuality Program. He lectures internationally on the evaluation and treatment of sexual dysfunction.
He began studying piano at age six with Nadia Reisenberg at the Juilliard School Precollege Division, and he furthered his musical education with Nadia Boulanger in France. He is a first prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild Award and the Chopin Competition of the Kosciuszko Foundation. He has been a frequent chamber music collaborator with cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
