Quarter Notes

Roberta (Bobbi) Cohn, the daughter of immigrants and whose family fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe, grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and at elementary school age began attending Tanglewood concerts in the summer. “My parents always found ways to support the things that were important,” she said, “and Sunday afternoon Tanglewood concerts, on the lawn, were tops among those activities. Music was so important to my mother that she offered me violin lessons as a child. Although I tried,” she continued, “I did not have the talent and stopped studying violin after a couple of years. However, my love of classical music, which began when I was a young child, has always remained.”

Over her 50 years as a volunteer, Bobbi has served in so many capacities at Tanglewood that she has covered the gamut. She began volunteering during the summers in the late 1960s, when she was a student at UMass Amherst. “I started out as a program girl,” she said. “When I began, I had to wear a long gown, white gloves that came up to my elbows, and high heels with nylon stockings on my feet. On Sunday we were allowed to wear a white dress.” Bobbi considers her most memorable time with Tanglewood being when she worked as a camp counselor during the day and a program girl on the weekends. Among the campers she got to know were two young girls who were the granddaughters of the Koussevitzkys. “The girls would insist that I come with them to frequent parties at Seranak,” she said. “The parties were amazing, and I even had the opportunity to meet the already-famous Michael Tilson Thomas.”

In those early years, there were few women volunteering as young as Bobbi. On days when there were not enough ushers, she was called upon to help out as the lone female usher in the Shed. Bobbi continued volunteering every summer as a program girl until 1974, when she took 10 years of leave to get married and have a baby. However, in 1985, she returned to volunteer in the Visitor Center, which, at that time, was in the Tappan House. In that role, Bobbi answered phones and greeted patrons. She identified a need and took it upon herself to develop a customer service program that included protocols for dress, phone call etiquette, and sensitivity training to advise volunteers on how to handle difficult patrons and situations. With the support of the BSO staff, she and her co-chair Carole Siegel presented these guidelines to volunteers in workshops at various locations around the Berkshires, including Monument High School and on the Tanglewood grounds. In the 1990s, Bobbi worked as a bus greeter, assisting patrons who poured into Tanglewood from New York City, Boston, and Albany for the Sunday afternoon concerts.

In 1999, she was appointed the project lead for Training Coordination, a position she held until 2002, and from 2001 to 2003 she served on the BSAV Executive Committee as Vice Chair, where she had oversight of Membership. She was appointed a second time to the Executive Committee in 2011 as Co-Chair of Community Outreach and Audience Development, for which she served until 2015. She became a member of the Nominating Committee from 2017 to 2018, and also volunteered for Talks and Walks for several years, and in the Welcome Center for five years. Currently, those on the Tanglewood grounds can find Bobbi driving a jitney for development events. “My favorite of the volunteer projects was Talks and Walks,” she said. “However, everything I did was great, because I met so many wonderful people and made good friends through these Tanglewood experiences.”

Bobbi is married to Dr. Michael Cohn. They continue to live in Pittsfield and spend their winters in Florida. The have one daughter, Lara, two sons, Jonathan and Robert, as well as seven grandsons: Benjamin, 13, Eliot and Levi who are both 11, Joshua and Noah who are both 9, Oliver, 6 and Milo, 3.