Biography

Allen Cohen’s music for orchestra, solo instruments, chamber groups, chorus, and solo voice has been performed around the world and recorded on commercial compact discs. Currently Professor of Music at Fairleigh Dickinson University, he has also taught at Hunter College, New York University, and Manhattanville College. He has received a Meet the Composer grant and many ASCAP awards, and is a board member of the League of Composers/International Society for Contemporary Music.

The author of Howard Hanson in Theory and Practice and the popular children’s book That’s So Funny I Forgot to Laugh!, and co-author of Writing Musical Theater (with Steven L. Rosenhaus), he has provided critical introductions for new editions of scores by Dvorak, Gounod, Janacek, and Lyadov, been published in The New York Times and The Baker Street Journal, and presented papers on music theory and musical theater at conferences in New York City, Hawaii, Greece, and Germany. He has also served as a judge for The American Prize in music for many years.

His doctorate is from the City University of New York, where he studied with Thea Musgrave, Bruce Saylor, and David Del Tredici. In a previous career he wrote scores for films, commercials, and off-Broadway musicals, and performed extensively as a conductor and pianist. 

“The hallmarks of my music are melody, energy, concision, and intensity of emotional expression. I am influenced by both the art music of many centuries and the popular music of today and yesterday. I am a modern American Romantic; I believe strongly that art is sterile if it does not communicate, and shallow if it is not well constructed—that music should be both accessible and skillfully crafted—and I try to achieve both goals when I compose.”

"I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing."
—Bela Bartok

"Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning."
—Frederic Chopin