Professor
Philip
Cohen of Concordia University, Montreal, studied with Yvonne Hubert,
the doyenne of Montreal piano teachers from the 1940's to the 1980's, herself
a student of Alfred Cortot. Ronald Turini and Andre Laplante are two other
notable luminaries from that generation of Hubert students and more recently
she taught Marc-André Hamelin, Marc Durand and Louis Lortie. Prof.
Cohen also cultivated an interest in the psychology of perception and action,
and eventually founded the Leonardo Program at Concordia, designed for
research into the creative process in artists of exceptional ability.
Cohen focuses on the relationship of thought, perception and physical response, and has discovered a way of freeing the arm not for purposes of relaxation but rather so that arm movement can exactly sculpt the desired phrase shape and even the desired tone quality. Relaxation and optimal physical organization became a by-product of piano technique rather than the goal.