Lighting and production designer/director Steve Cohen’s credits include shows for a couple of piano men (Billy Joel and Elton John), three divas, (Mariah, Britney, and Luther) a boy band (*NSYNC), a little country (Sugarland, The Judds, Amy Grant), some pop idols (Timberlake, Enrique, Linkin Park,), dinosaurs (The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Van Halen, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash), music legends (Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Yes, and Don Henley), and a few superstars (Reba, Lenny Kravtiz, and John Mellencamp). And a few ‘80s bands (Heart, Hall and Oates, Boz Scaggs, and ELO)…
Cohen has also produced, lit, and directed the Andre Agassi Grand Slam for Kids in Las Vegas for the last 18 years, where guys like Josh Grobin and Michael Bublé showed their stuff for the first time. For George Lucas and John Williams, he designed and directed Star Wars in Concert for which he won a 2010 Redden Award, and produced the documentary film, The Last Play at Shea, which aired on Showtime.
At Live Design’s Concert Master Classes, December 3 & 4, at USC in Los Angeles, Cohen teams up with Butch Allen and Seth Jackson on the panel, The Blank Page, which discusses how designers grapple with those earliest moments in the process: Where do you begin? Where do the ideas originate? Once an idea is approved, what happens next? Set design: do you design your own set? How best to collaborate with the production team and artist for creative concerns?
Most Recent Project: Concert For Global Poverty In Central Park
First Big Break: 1973 presidential inaugural gala (but that first Billy Joel show in 1974 was really where it all started)
Influences: Kubrick , Pollack , Neutra, Jim Day
First Concert You Saw: Three Dog Night at the Valley Music Theatre
Favorite Concert Design Of All Time: Yes, Tales from a Topographic Ocean
What Do You Most Like To Do When Not Working:
Painting
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