Gerald Cohen was born in 1960 in New York City.  He received a B.A. in music from Yale University in 1982, and began his career as a cantor while pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University, where he received a D.M.A. in composition, with distinction, in 1993. 

Cohen is well known as a composer of both liturgical and concert music. His music is published by Oxford University Press and Transcontinental Music Press.   A CD of his music, entitled Generations, is on the Composers Recordings, Inc. label, and includes solo vocal music sung by the composer, a Passover cantata for children's chorus, and several works of chamber music.

Among recent awards and commissions he has recveived are the Westchester Prize, commissioning An Undaunted Heart: Songs of Elders for the New York Virtuoso Singers; the American Composers Forum Faith Partners residency, commissioning choral music for several leading congregations in Manhattan; and the Cantors Assembly's Max Wohlberg Award, for distinguished achievement in the field of Jewish composition.  He is currently composing his first opera, Sarah and Hagar  (with librettist Charles Kondek), based on the book of Genesis.

Cohen is Cantor at Shaarei Tikvah Congregation in Scarsdale, N.Y., and is on the faculty of the H.L. Miller Cantorial School of the Jewish Theological Seminary.  He lives in Yonkers with his wife, Caroline, and son, Daniel.