Tim Cobb

Timothy Cobb is the current principal double bassist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. He currently teaches at Manhattan School of Music, Purchase SUNY, Lynn University, Rutgers University: Mason Gross School of the Arts, and is the current head of the double bass department at the Juilliard School.

A native of Albany, New York, Tim Cobb began playing the bass at the age of seven, studying with his father David Cobb, and was playing professionally by thirteen. He attended the Curtis Institute of Music, where he was awarded the sole position available for bass in the year of his application to study with Roger Scott. While at Curtis, Mr Cobb substituted regularly in the Philadelphia Orchestra and in the fall of his senior year became a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti. Appointed associate principal bass of the Met Orchestra in 1986, Mr. Cobb was granted a leave of absence by Maestro Solti to perform with the Metropolitan Opera, where he elected to stay. He was appointed principal bass several years later. As a member of the Met Orchestra, he has enjoyed touring with the entire company and with the orchestra on the symphonic stage, led by Maestro James Levine. He has also enjoyed frequent collaborations with Maestro Levine in the chamber setting performing works such as Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet and Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat, to name but two. Maestro Levine has created a series at Weill Hall in New York to showcase the chamber abilities within his orchestra, a series where Mr. Cobb has made regular appearances.

Tim Cobb has enjoyed invitations to perform in the “world” orchestra created by Maestro Solti, (subsequently led by Maestro Valery Gergiev), and in Japan as principal bass of the new “super orchestra,” a gathering of musicians from major orchestras around the world. He was recently appointed principal bass of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra led by Maestro Gerard Schwarz, and is solo bassist for the Harmonie Ensemble, a New York–based woodwind ensemble, as well as the solo bassist for the St. Barth’s International Music Festival, St. Barthelemy, French West Indies, where he performs for a week in January each year. He also recently appeared in Ainay-le-Vieil, France, performing with the American Chamber Ensemble.

Mr. Cobb has recorded for the Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, Sony, and Music & Arts labels and is active as a studio musician in New York, recording numerous soundtracks for movies, television, songs, and advertisements featured nationally and internationally.

Each year in December, he coaches the basses of the New York String Seminar at Carnegie Hall. In June, Tim Cobb joins the Sarasota Music Festival to perform as well as to coach chamber music featuring the bass. Mr. Cobb was recently invited to give a master class and recital at the Tokyo University of the Arts in Japan.