Richard Kogan

Richard Kogan has a distinguished career both as a concert pianist and as a psychiatrist. He has been praised for his "eloquent, compelling, and exquisite 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." He has gained renown for his lectures and recitals that explore the role of music in healing and the influence of psychological factors on the creative output of composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein.

He performed Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and gave an address entitled "The Power of Music in Healing Mind and Body" at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He has recorded a DVD for Yamaha/Touchstar Productions entitled Music and the Mind. Yo Yo Ma wrote of this DVD, "I came away from this extraordinary lecture and performance deeply moved by a fascinating presentation that only Dr. Kogan, psychiatrist and concert pianist, can deliver." Kogan has won the Concert Artists Guild Award and the Chopin Competition of the Kosciuszko Foundation and received the 2005 Artsgenesis Creative Achievement Award.

Dr. Kogan's presentations are extraordinary, one-of-a-kind performances. He tells vivid stories about famous composers who suffered mental problems—frequent among highly creative people—while illustrating the composer's work by exquisitely playing excerpts from their compositions. From composers such as Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Leonard Bernstein, Dr. Kogan shares an insight and journey into some of the most creative minds, while humanizing medicine and bringing more of the person into medical practice. Dr. Kogan will open your ears and eyes to the symphony that is humanity, music, and medicine.

Kogan is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music Pre-College, Harvard College, and Harvard Medical School. He completed a psychiatry residency and an academic fellowship at NYU. He has a private practice of psychiatry in New York City and is affiliated with Weill Cornell Medical College as co-director of its Human Sexuality Program. He is also co-chairman of the recently established Weill Cornell Music/Medicine Initiative.