At the age of twenty-one, Boston-born Yuga Cohler was the youngest of three conductors accepted to the Juilliard School’s master of music program in orchestral conducting. As a recipient of the school’s Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship, Yuga studies with New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert and renowned pedagogue James Ross.

Currently, Yuga serves as the assistant conductor of the World Civic Orchestra (WCO), with whom he made his Carnegie Hall Isaac Stern Auditorium debut last summer. In September 2011, Yuga will lead the orchestra in a performance of Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. Before coming to the WCO, Yuga held the music directorship of the Harvard University Bach Society Orchestra, a post previously occupied by such luminaries as Alan Gilbert, Hugh Wolff, John Adams, and John Harbison. Noted for his “excellent dynamic control” and eliciting a “refined sound,” Yuga conducted the orchestra in several sold-out performances, including those with violinist Ryu Goto and pianist Robert Levin. At Harvard, Yuga also music directed the Dunster House Opera in its 2009 production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, which marked the first Boston performance of the work in over twenty years.

Originally trained as an oboist, Yuga has been much acclaimed for his instrumental work as well. Among his many prizes include the Level I Award in the 2007 youngArts competition sponsored by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, the first prize in the 2006 Arlington Philharmonic Young Artist Competition, and the Grand Prize in the 2006 International Chamber Ensemble Competition of the Chamber Music Foundation of New England. Having appeared on the national radio show From the Top three times, Yuga’s oboe playing has reached the ears of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Yuga was born into a musical family and consequently commenced his musical training at a very early age. He began studying solfège, ear training, and piano with his mother at the age of three and conducting with his father at fifteen. Throughout his high school years, Yuga attended the New England Conservatory Preparatory School, where he served as principal oboe of the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra for four years and performed as concerto soloist with the orchestra on its concert tour to China.

The music festivals in which Yuga has participated include the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, the Domaine Forget, the Bard Conductors’ Institute, and the European American Musical Alliance Summer Conducting Program, from which he graduated with highest honors in keyboard harmony and counterpoint. This past summer, he attended the Cabrillo Festival’s Conducting Workshop, where he studied with Gustav Meier and Marin Alsop. Yuga’s principal conducting teachers have been Federico Cortese, Hugh Wolff, and Mark Shapiro, and his principal oboe teachers have been Robert Sheena and Janice Bennett.
Yuga graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, where he studied computer science and was a recipient of the David McCord Prize for Artistic Excellence, the Detur Book Prize, and the John Harvard Scholarship.