Oral History Interview with Deborah Cohen

This oral history is provided free by the Archives of the Interlochen Center for the Arts (ARTICA). It has been accepted for inclusion in Interlochen’s audio archive by an authorized administrator of Interlochen Center for the Arts. For more information, please contact archives@interlochen.org.

00:00:00    BRAD BAILEY
This is Brad Bailey. Today is August 8th, 2024. I'm doing an oral history interview with-

00:00:08    DEBORAH COHEN
Deborah Cohen.

00:00:09    BRAD BAILEY
On the campus of the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Nice to meet you, Deborah.

00:00:13    DEBORAH COHEN
Nice to meet you, Brad.

00:00:14    BRAD BAILEY 
Wonderful. So can you tell me where you were born and where did you spend your childhood?

00:00:18    DEBORAH COHEN 
Gary, Indiana.

00:00:20    BRAD BAILEY 
You were born there, and you spent your entire childhood in Gary?

00:00:24    DEBORAH COHEN 
That is true.

00:00:25    BRAD BAILEY 
Wonderful. Talk to me about your childhood. What was it like growing up in Gary? Talk to me about your parents. You know, your siblings and just what it was like growing up there and when.

00:00:34    DEBORAH COHEN 
So I grew up there in the late 1940s to.. I graduated from high school in 1965. And I grew up in a family, we were four when we started out, but by the time I had finished my second summer at Interlochen, we were down to three because we lost my brother, who had also been a camper years before me, in an accident. I was at Camp. He was in Gary and was getting ready to move on to Indiana University, but unfortunately that did not come to pass. So Interlochen became a kind of a pivotal moment in my life, not only because it was this great place to go, away from home and meet new people from many places, and start to try to learn some music and art, but also because it became this pivot point for me, starting out as a younger sister and ending up as an only child.

00:01:55    BRAD BAILEY 
And so, talk to me about the impact of music on your life for you and your brother before his accident, growing up.

00:02:04    DEBORAH COHEN 
So both our parents had grown up quite poor, and they never had the opportunity to try an instrument or I don't know if they even, I imagine they, they sang, you know, but they, they didn't grow up in environments where there were musical, the kind of thing where, you know, your parents send you for piano lessons or to play the violin or any of that. But when both my brother and I were kids, my parents really, both of them, wanted to, I think, expose us to all the stuff that they'd not had as children, but that they knew was out there and wanted us to share both as individuals but as a family. And I don't know how they first heard about Interlochen. I'm thinking that there may have been other kids in our schools, school buddies who had gone. Some kids had gone. And so my brother went first and then I after him. But we had also been- we were taken to hear music, whether it be a band performance at school or we lived an hour from Chicago. So we would go to Chicago now and again, and I remember going to the Art Institute as a little kid, and my brother did too. And we also, we grew up in the era when Leonard Bernstein was doing young people's concerts on television. So we, we knew that music was out there. And neither of us, I would say, was planning on a career in music. I don't- we didn't have those kind of virtuoso chops, but we enjoyed playing our instruments, and the whole camp experience was fun because we met kids from all over. Whereas otherwise, you know, people didn't, I think travel like they do now necessarily. And there wasn't the internet and social media. And so you didn't really know a lot about others unless and until you had an opportunity, like Interlochen was in those days, to meet young people from all over.

00:04:36    BRAD BAILEY 
And so talking about your music education, you did mention your music education, though, before you got to Interlochen, did your parents play again? Did your parents play?

00:04:45    DEBORAH COHEN 
No. They never had any of that education. They would go to concerts, but neither of them had any musical background.

00:04:54    BRAD BAILEY 
nd so what instrument did your brother play again?

00:04:57    DEBORAH COHEN 
He played the clarinet.

00:04:58    BRAD BAILEY 
The clarinet. And so talk to me then about the first time you heard about Interlochen. And what year was that? And then talk to me about all of that. And then what was your process of getting in? And of course, coming up here.

00:05:10    DEBORAH COHEN 
So I would have heard about Interlochen when I was a very young kid because my brother went before I went. He was a camper before I was a camper. So somewhere in the archive you can get his specific years, which I don't-

00:05:30    BRAD BAILEY 
What's his name?

00:05:31    DEBORAH COHEN 
Jonathan. J o n a t h a n. And his middle initial is D.

00:05:42    BRAD BAILEY 
Okay. And what year was he here?

00:05:45    DEBORAH COHEN 
That's what I cannot tell you.

00:05:47    BRAD BAILEY 
Okay. What year were you here?

00:05:49    DEBORAH COHEN 
I was there 1957 to 1960. And again in 1962.

00:05:55    BRAD BAILEY 
Okay. Wow. Okay. Okay. So he was here before, during or?

00:05:59    DEBORAH COHEN
Before me. He was here before me.

00:06:02    BRAD BAILEY 
Okay.

00:06:02    DEBORAH COHEN 
So while I was there. So he was in there, presumably in the early to mid 50s.

00:06:11    BRAD BAILEY 
And so what was your concentration when you got here the first time?

00:06:15    DEBORAH COHEN 
Well, when I started, I was a junior, and I don't know that we had concentrations as juniors, but I took Beginning Wind and my dream had been to play the french horn, but I think they felt it was too much. The size of the instrument was not either available or appropriate for me because I ended up with the flute.

00:06:47    BRAD BAILEY 
So talk to me about the first time you arrived on campus. Leaving home the- Had you left home before?

00:06:52    DEBORAH COHEN 
hadn't been to sleep away camp before, but since, you know, since my brother had been, it wasn't a completely strange to me.

00:07:04    BRAD BAILEY 
So talk to me then about the process of getting here. And what was it like when you first arrived?

00:07:11    DEBORAH COHEN 
So when I got there, we drove up. So we drove up from Gary, and I had my trunk with my stuff in it, and so did all the other little girls who were my cabin mates, and I don't know how many we were. I'm going to guess, we were a dozen, something like that. And we were in cabin one, which I think means we were the youngest ones at Camp. So our cabin was like immediately adjacent to the, the commandant's house. You know the who, she was a very nice woman whose, whose name I'm not coming up with right this minute. She had an unusual first nickname, and she, I think she had probably been at Camp some years before, although I'm making this all up now. Anyway. So it was great. We had counselors we liked. You had a counselor and a, and an assistant counselor who were- they seemed very grown up to me, but I believed that they were college students, and we all were just very busy getting to know each other and getting to know our instruments and taking sports classes. Many of us did swimming, and I had grown up a block from Lake Michigan, So swimming was something I at least knew the basics of. So that was pretty, you know, straightforward for me. And I remember I didn't love the food. The food was strange, sometimes. It wasn't all terrible, but it was, you know, I guess it was whatever camp food is. I remember only in, I think in my one of the years I was in intermediate, I think we all sent the spam balls back to the-

00:09:10    BRAD BAILEY 
Spam balls?

00:09:12    DEBORAH COHEN 
Yeah, they were fried spam balls. They were not a hit.

00:09:17    BRAD BAILEY 
Talk to me about your teachers during- that was for the summer or the Academy. That was the summer, correct?

00:09:22    DEBORAH COHEN 
No, there was no Academy when I started.

00:09:24    BRAD BAILEY 
So this is the summer. Great. So talk to me about the teachers that you had the first year. And then, of course, over the next subsequent, subsequent years.

00:09:33    DEBORAH COHEN 
I have to say that because it is so long ago. I don't remember many specifics about teachers, except I remember I really liked my cabin counselors, and I ended up, since I played the flute for multiple years, I ended up with the same teacher over several years. I don't remember his first name. It might have been either Richard or Robert, but his last name was Resnick. R e s n i c k. And I think he was on the faculty, music faculty either at the University of Illinois or the University of Michigan somewhere, was a midwesterner, but he was he was a nice and patient man.

00:09:21    BRAD BAILEY 
I'm sure. And so talk to me about some of the people that you met that stuck with you during those years, your other students or even other people who were on staff here at the school.

00:10:31    DEBORAH COHEN 
So one of my cabin mates, who I was very impressed with at the time and liked, was a woman. She was a little girl at that time named Erica. And then I had another cabinmate named Erica, and I get them mixed up, but it was either Erica Goodman. I think it's Erica Goodman is the one who's Canadian. Her father was the concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony maybe? And she turned out to be a real musician.

00:11:10    BRAD BAILEY 
So can you tell me how Interlochen helped shaped your craft as a, as a person and as a musician?

00:11:17    DEBORAH COHEN 
So I suspect it shaped me more as a person. I think it probably engaged my skills, so to speak, in getting out and meeting a variety of people and learning how much was going on in the world and how different people's lives could be, because otherwise, you know, I was more or less confined, so to speak, to my neighborhood in Gary. And I had all my friends and so forth, but we were all doing similar activities. So it was really kind of amazing to meet, and especially in terms of music, which is something that I did not have as an innate talent for. Anything I achieved, I simply worked at it. But there was a variety of skill levels among everyone with whom I lived and interacted. And I think, of course, the most impressive part was the smaller percentage of the really talented kids at the top who again, I would never have met if I had only been at home. So getting to know them, getting to watch them work, and getting to enjoy seeing them succeed gave me both an appreciation for the difficulty of doing well, playing well, and the joy and the beauty when one succeeds. And I think of it a bit as like, if you watch dancers and you've never tried to make some of those moves, you may or may not fully appreciate how terrifically tough it is to move effortlessly. And a similar thing with, with music. How difficult it can be the place from which one starts to get to the point where the music soars. So I think it gave me a sense of the possible. And even if there were parts of the possible that I did not think would be possible for me, there were other areas in which ultimately I did feel I could make progress and live a satisfying life and career.

00:14:10    BRAD BAILEY 
And so how do you look at your Interlochen experience now? How does it shape you in ways that affect your life now, whether it be the music or the lessons you learned or the people you met here?

00:14:22    DEBORAH COHEN 
Well, when I went, as I say, it was, it broadened my life. You know, I was a child, so I didn't see that as phenomenal. But from a distance, I realize how fortunate I was, how it expanded my view of what was possible. What lives can be like? What levels of achievement and accomplishment are in the world? And looking at it now, from this point of view, I see it as a place that offers talented young people a chance to really go full speed ahead with what their talents and interests are. So for that number of people who can become virtuosos and support themselves in the arts, it's a great place. And for those who are going to go on to be pediatricians or school teachers or engineers or whatever it might be, but want to do music casually, I guess not as a for a salary, I think it enabled them to also make friends and see the possibilities for music and the arts to enrich our everyday lives, even in the midst of very disparate activities.

00:16:02    BRAD BAILEY 
And so, any other thoughts about that?

00:16:05    DEBORAH COHEN 
Well, I'm thrilled that it exists, and I love, I've loved coming back every year and seeing both how it has grown, but how the feeling stays the same. You know, it is still this very unprepossessing environment in the north woods, and I think that's also part of its charm and its value.

00:16:36    BRAD BAILEY 
And so, what do you hope for, for the future of Interlochen?

00:16:39    DEBORAH COHEN 
I hope it can maintain itself as a special place. Because I think it is.. It is unusual in that it brings together an international community, not in a major urban crossroads. So it's kind of, I feel like it offers a chance to be very engaged and active and yet to kind of breathe, because it doesn't require jumping into the subway, fighting the traffic, dashing to the supermarket. It's, it's kind of like going to a spa, but a busy spa. I don't know, it's not really a good descriptor, but.

00:17:37    BRAD BAILEY 
I think it's a great descriptor, actually.

00:17:39    DEBORAH COHEN 
Okay.

00:17:40    BRAD BAILEY 
So, talk to me about what advice would you have for future Interlochen students.

00:17:44    DEBORAH COHEN 
If you get the chance to go, just live every moment, as they say. Enjoy every moment and know that if you're struggling, the odds are so are the other people.

00:17:58    BRAD BAILEY 
And somebody else is too.

00:17:59    DEBORAH COHEN 
Yeah, and you've got people to, you know, you've got people to share. Yes, you share the highs, but you can also share the, if not lows, just the the complications, let's say the challenges.

00:18:13    BRAD BAILEY 
Last question. Why does art matter in the world today to you?

00:18:18    DEBORAH COHEN 
I think it does bring out the best in us. I think if we allow it to catch our eye or our ear, I think it's an opportunity to see some of the beauty and possibility that people can create and to, in a way, enable us to be our better selves.

00:18:48    BRAD BAILEY 
Anything else about that, that you'd like to add?

00:18:51    DEBORAH COHEN
Probably, but not that I'm capable to articulate.

00:18:55    BRAD BAILEY 
I think you've been so articulate and so amazing. Well, thank you. Deborah. Is there anything else you'd like to add about the interview? Maybe your thoughts about how Interlochen has changed over the years since your visits back? And, you know, any sort of general thoughts about, you know, the whole spirit of things?

00:19:09    DEBORAH COHEN 
Well, I think the one thing I have sort of been impressed with is, it seems to me that the spirit has not changed. It has grown, but it seems to have retained a lot of the old feeling, which is that, you know, you're kind of- you're there to explore and hone to the extent you can, your talents and to appreciate and cheer on other people's talents. You know, part of what's so great about Interlochen is you've got all these accomplished or accomplishing people of all ages, but everybody seems to be kind of rooting for everybody else as well as for themselves, but not just for themselves. And that's a great spirit. It's a community, and it's community, I hope that will save us. The decline of community. That, of course, I think has a lot of us a little worried. So I see it as a great, it's a great communal space, I guess is maybe one way or another, you know, word to throw in there.

00:20:30    BRAD BAILEY 
Well, thank you so much for your time. And that's it. This is Brad Bailey on the campus of the Interlochen Center for the Arts. And this concludes my oral history interview with Deborah Cohen for the Interlochen Oral History Project.