Kotcheff was born in
Wilmington, North Carolina and raised in
Los Angeles, California. His parents are Laifun Chung and director
Ted Kotcheff, and he has an older sister, Alexandra. He began taking
piano lessons at the age of 4 and in 2006 he graduated from
Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. In 2010, Kotcheff completed a
Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from
Peabody Institute of
Johns Hopkins University and then attended
USC Thornton School of Music from 2010 to 2019 where he received a Masters of
Master of Music and a
Doctor of Music in
Music Composition. He studied composition with
Stephen Hartke, Donald Crockett,
Frank Ticheli, and
Steven Stucky, and piano with Benjamin Pasternack and
Stewart L. Gordon. Kotcheff serves as Ear Training and Music Theory Faculty at the
Colburn School. He is a teaching artist at the
Los Angeles Philharmonic Composer Fellowship Program. Kotcheff has held residencies at
Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence, the
Los Angeles Philharmonic's National Composers Intensive, The Hermitage Artist Retreat,
The Studios of Key West, and The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. As a new music pianist, Kotcheff has dedicated himself to commissioning and premiering new piano works. In 2020, his performance of
Frederic Rzewski's
Songs of Insurrection was awarded Best Instrumental Recital Performance in Los Angeles by San Francisco Classical Voice's Audience Choice Awards. He released the world premiere recording of "Songs of Insurrection" on the Coviello Contemporary label. In 2014, Kotcheff founded the new music piano duo
HOCKET with
Sarah Gibson. They were Core Artists with the Los Angeles organization Piano Spheres. ==Selected works==