Arizona Opera Cast Members & Creatives

Steven Mark Kohn’s creative output as a composer, arranger, and writer spans the gamut from folk song arrangements premiered at Carnegie Hall to television jingles for Fortune 500 companies and Disney Channel film scores.

Kohn’s involvement in Riders of the Purple Sage is a natural outgrowth of his love affair with American musical folklore. His three-volume set of American folk song arrangements was premiered at Carnegie Hall by David Daniels and Martin Katz, and recorded on Azica Records by Andrew Garland. This style of music also permeates his dramatic art song cycle, commissioned by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore, and based on the diaries of Mary Chesnut, a confederate woman of the Civil War era.

Kohn has composed scores for several award-winning animated children’s films for PBS, ABC, and the Disney Channel, including Frog and Toad Together, Uncle Elephant, Cousin Kevin, Commander Toad in Space, Morris Goes to School, Ralph S. Mouse, and the Emmy-nominated Runaway Ralph, starring Fred Savage and Ray Walston.

As a composer and arranger, Kohn has created TV and radio commercial music for companies such as Wheaties, Arby’s, Matrix, Volvo, BP, and Hickory Farms. He has also written and arranged music for Sea World, Harper Collins Audio Books, Second Story Productions, The Sylvia Rimm Show on NPR, and the documentary film Let Them Live for BBC 2 London. The music he created for the popular Health Journeys guided imagery has helped propel the series to more than two million copies sold worldwide. 

As a writer, he is a frequent collaborator of composer Craig Bohmler, having crafted lyrics for Bohmler’s The Quiltmaker’s Gift,Unstoppable Me, The Tale of the Nutcracker, and The Three Redneck Tenors. Kohn is on the composition faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music as director of the electronic music studio.