Stephen Cook received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Music degrees from the University of South Carolina where he studied composition with Dr. Samuel Douglas and piano performance and pedagogy with Dr. Max Camp. 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 served 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 in Santa Ana, California, a nationally recognized pre-professional arts high school. He was an Associate Professor at Whittier College from 2002-2017,
including six years as Department Chair, and was Principal of Arts at California School of the Arts from 2017 -2025. He has served on the Executive Board of the California Association of Professional Music Teachers, is a former Research Program Specialist with the Music Intelligence Neural Development Institute at the University of California, Irvine, and currently was appointed as Executive Director of the Pasadena Conservatory of Music in August, 2025.