Susan Lamb Cook

Susan Lamb Cook is currently Lecturer in Cello and Chamber Music at the University of California, Davis and is an active educator in the capital region.  

 

Her solo and chamber music recitals have been broadcast on Capital Public Radio, and she performs regularly with the Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera and the Sacramento Choral Society and Orchestra, and is Artistic Director of the VITA Academy’s Great Composers Chamber Music Series at the Harris Center for the Arts in Folsom. For many years, she served on faculty for the Saarburg Festival, Germany, the Vianden Festival, Luxembourg, and on the artistic staff for the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria.  Her recordings include Works for Cello and Piano by Rachmaninoff, The Gold Coast Trio—Works by Beethoven, Beach, Bernstein and Piazzolla, and La Commedia—Chamber Music by American composer Daniel Kingman for Innova Recordings.

 

As a member of the Gold Coast Trio, she served as artist-in-residence at Xiamen University in China and the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria, and performed and gave master classes at San Francisco State University, Scripps College, and Harvey Mudd College. The trio’s performance at the Liszt Concert Hall in Raiding, Austria, was featured on Austrian National Television, and the their performance of the Beethoven Triple Concerto with the Lake Tahoe Music Festival received critical acclaim. 

 

As a member of the Kismarton Trio, Susan performed concerts in the Hungarian National Museum and the Petöfi Museum of Literature, Budapest, as well as the opening concert for the 2024 International Music Festival, Grosslobming, Austria.  On an annual basis, Susan continues to perform chamber music concerts in Budapest with members of the Hungarian National Philharmonic and the Hungarian Festival Orchestra, and chamber orchestra concerts in Austria and Italy with the Louis Spohr Sinfonietta. 

 

Following her studies at the University of Iowa with Charles Wendt, Susan moved to Vienna, Austria where she continued her studies and performed with numerous ensembles in Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Italy.  During the decade she spent in Europe, Susan performed with the Arena di Verona opera orchestra, completing three seasons and joining the orchestra for a tour of Egypt with performances of Aida which used the grand Luxor Temple as backdrop.  She completed a degree at the Academy of Music in Vienna, Austria studying cello with Angelica May and chamber music with Georg Ebert, then joined the teaching staff as assistant professor of cello, a position she held for two years before returning to her home of Sacramento.

 

As pedagogue, Susan Lamb Cook is highly regarded as both cellist and chamber musician, and her students perform regularly for competitions and public concerts. She is an active member of the Music Teachers National Association and the American String Teachers Association, and is co-author of Guide to Teaching Strings by Norman Lamb. In recent years, her focus on music education has taken her to public schools around the region offering performances, presentations, and individual classroom visits. In 2009, her work in developing the Sacramento Youth Symphony’s Chamber Music Workshop was recognized by the New York-based organization Chamber Music America, and in 2019, she received a resolution from the City of Sacramento in celebration of 30 years as director of this program.