Dr. Cora Cooper, Professor of Music at Kansas State University, teaches violin, viola, chamber music and string techniques. She holds graduate degrees in violin performance from the Eastman School of Music and Florida State University, and has studied with Peter Salaff, Charles Castleman, Linda Cerone, Thomas and Evelyn Read, Karen Clarke and Eliot Chapo. Her work with music by women composers has led to performances of music by Lili Boulanger, Margaret Lucy Wilkins, Alice Ho, Maddalena Lombardini-Sirmen and Ethel Barns at the Festival of Women Composers at Indiana University of Pennsylvania four times, and lectures in the United States and England on “The ‘Babe-ification’ of Women in Classical Music.” She also co-edited an edition of “Six Duettos for Two Violins” by Maddalena Lombardini-Sirmen with Karen Clarke, which is published by Hildegard Publishing Company. Dr. Cooper served on the violin committee for the 1997 and 2009 editions of the ASTA String Syllabus, and has been a contributor to both the AST Journal and GIA Publications’ “Teaching Music Through Performance in Orchestra.” In 2004, she served as committee chair and adjudicator for ASTA’s Joseph Nagyvary Violin Competition. Recent publications (Prairie Dawg Press) include an edition of violin duets by Mozart’s contemporary, Joseph Gehot, and a compilation of duets and etudes by Josephine Trott. She is currently at work on a graded anthology of violin music by women composers.

An active chamber musician in the Midwestern United States, Cooper has performed with pianist Robert Moeling, violinists Scott St. John and Paul Rosenthal, and cellists Evan Drachman and Eric Edberg. She performs on Baroque, modern, and occasionally electric violin, and viola. Cooper had the rare experience of playing third violin when she joined the Da Vinci String Quartet to record Charles Martin Loeffler’s Quintet in One Movement for NAXOS American Classics. She has had professional symphony experience playing with the Vermont, Austin and Tallahassee Symphonies, the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, and numerous regional orchestras in the Southeast. Cooper was a faculty member at the Adult Chamber Music Festival in Bozeman, Montana, for nine years, and at the Arkansas Music Festival for three years.

Cooper also serves as faculty advisor to the K-State student chapter of ASTA, bringing in guest artists each year for master classes and concerts. In addition to her college teaching, she maintains an active private studio.