Jeanine Cowen Named Interim Assistant Chair of Film Scoring
Jeanine Cowen B.M. ‘96 will serve as the interim assistant chair of Berklee's Film Scoring Department.
Image courtesy of Berklee College of Music
Berklee has named composer, producer, and sound designer Jeanine Cowen as interim assistant chair of the Film Scoring Department. Cowen trained at Northwestern University and graduated from Berklee, where she studied film scoring and music production and engineering. Cowen has completed graduate work in interactive design and game development from Savannah College of Art and Design. She has worked at Berklee in various roles in Boston and Valencia, Spain, since 2004. Cowen is a native of Bettendorf, Iowa, and currently resides in Auburndale, Massachusetts.
Cowen has served on development teams at the Education Development Center (EDC), Turbine Entertainment, and Turning Point Software. Her compositions can be found across various art and media, such as the documentary The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo, the critically acclaimed off-Broadway play Rapt, and Midway Games’ massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. Cowen’s work as a percussionist can be heard on music technologist and BerkleeNYC Executive Director Stephen Webber's Stylus Symphony. She also served as an active advisor to the Alliance for Women Film Composers during its founding.
Cowen maintains an active teaching presence in audio and game development, as well as in music composition, production, and technology. She teaches teaches both at the college and for Berklee Online, at Interlochen Arts Academy, and at Pluralsight. Cowen is a frequent speaker in the industry, representing the college at conferences in the U.S. and abroad. She has delivered talks at GameSoundCon, Espacio Fundación Telefónica, the Women in Film and Media Summit, and the Women's Empower Symposium, among others.
“Jeanine Cowen has always been a devoted and valued member of our Berklee faculty and staff, no matter what role she has held throughout the years,” said Sean McMahon, chair of the Film Scoring Department. “Her knowledge and experience from working as a composer across various media are greatly beneficial to the film scoring faculty and indispensable to our students. I look forward to a collaborative and exciting partnership as she serves in the interim assistant chair role.”
About the Film Scoring Department
Founded in 1979, Berklee’s Film Scoring Department offers the study of scoring for film, TV, video games, and other visual media. Prominent Berklee alumni in the industry include Alex Lacamoire B.M. ‘95 (Hamilton), Alf Clausen '66 (The Simpsons), Ramin Djawadi B.M. '98 (Game of Thrones, Westworld), Howard Shore '68 (Lord of the Rings), Alan Silvestri '70 (Back to the Future, Marvel’s The Avengers), Pinar Toprak B.M. '00 (Captain Marvel)—the first female composer to score a major superhero movie—and Lucas Vidal B.M. '07 (Fast & Furious 6). Students in the program engage in immersive study of film music composition, editing, sequencing, and more in facilities that rival those used by commercial enterprises like Lucasfilm and major Hollywood studios.
