Stephen Cook received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Music degrees from the University of South Carolina where he studied composition and piano performance and pedagogy; additional studies were at the Aspen School of Music. While completing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California, Dr. Cook served as an assistant lecturer in the Keyboard Studies Department under the direction of Stewart Gordon. From 1996-2012 he taught on the faculty of the Colburn School of Performing Arts and from 1996-2004 was the Director of the Pianist Program at the Orange County School of the Arts. He served on the Executive Board of the California Association of Professional Music Teachers and is a former Research Program Specialist with the Music Intelligence Neural Development Institute at the University of California, Irvine.

From 2002-2017 Dr. Cook was Associate Professor of Music at Whittier College and from 2017-2026 was the Principal of Arts at California School of the Arts | San Gabriel Valley. He was the Chair of the Piano Department at PCM from 2014-2026 until becoming the conservatory’s Executive Director.