Ady Cohen is a film composer who also composes music for the stage, TV and the concert hall, and an Associate Professor of Contemporary Writing and Production at Berklee College of Music in Boston. A winner of the 1998 Israeli Academy Award for Best Film Score, the 2012 ACUM Award for Best Score for a Children’s Film, as well as numerous other Israeli and international awards, his career ignited at a young age after the late Maestro Leonard Bernstein became his patron and sponsored his studies at New York University. Ady has composed more than 400 film, TV and theater scores, and his music has been heard around the globe in venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in NY and played by renowned artists and ensembles such as the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Sounds Like: Nino Rota
Latest News
4/4/12 - Ady Cohen won the prestigious ACUM (Israeli ASCAP) Award for Best Music for a Children Film. Ady is the first-ever winner in this brand-new category.
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Ady Cohen - Film Composer
Ady Cohen is a film composer who also composes music for the stage, TV and the concert hall, and an Associate Professor of Contemporary Writing and Production and Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He is the winner of the 2012 ACUM (Israeli ASCAP) Award for Best Score for a Children's Film, and the 1998 Israeli Academy Award for Best Film Score. The film, "Dangerous Acts", won seven Academy Awards including Best Director. In October 2019, Ady was one of only 6 musicians nominated for the prestigious ICA (Israeli Culture and Arts) Award, honoring Israel's most impactful artists, alongside a handful of Israel's best-known and most successful artists worldwide, such as legendary violinists Pinchas Zukerman and Gil Shaham, choreographer extraordinaire Ohad Naharin and "Wonder Woman" Gal Gadot.
Having come from a family of musicians (most of them with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra), Ady was naturally drawn into the world of music, and soon enough became very successful at it. On the basis of his early work, the late Maestro Leonard Bernstein became Ady's patron and sponsored his studies at New York University where he graduated with Honors as a Bachelor of Fine Arts. He proceeded to win numerous international awards and scholarships.
Ady has composed over 400 film scores, TV films and series, theater plays and dance performances. His talents are also employed by the advertising industry in TV, cinema and radio commercials and jingles. Legendary musicians, such as Grammy Award winning composer Lalo Schifrin ("Mission: Impossible"), have praised Ady's music, and some of his illustrious collaborators include distinguished directors such as Academy Award winner Zbigniew Rybczynski ("Tango") and animator Gil Alkabetz ("Run Lola Run").
As a composer who specializes in dramatic music, Ady's unique ability to compose in different musical idioms, combined with his sensitivity to atmosphere and nuance, has led him to work in diverse genres: drama, comedy, action, suspense, thriller, children, teens, narrative as well as experimental films, and last but not least, his favorite: animation. Ady's passion for animation and mastery of this genre has proven to enthuse and move audiences worldwide, as manifested in dozens of millions of YouTube views, accompanied by rapturous, admiring comments, mostly for his Disney BabyTV music. His remarkable success in composing music scores for numerous animated films and TV series culminated in one of his recent accomplishments: 65 minutes of music for the breath-taking, exciting, energetic and moving epic score he has composed, orchestrated and conducted for the animated feature film "The Legend of King Solomon", a Hungarian-Israeli co-production. A suite of Ady's music from the film has been performed by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in a sold-out concert, with an audience of 3000 people, in January 2023.
Thanks to Ady's worldwide reputation as a composer, he was recently chosen as one of the final three candidates to become the Chair of Film Scoring at the distinguished Berklee College of Music, and was invited to give lectures, presentations and masterclasses on his work at prestigious institutions such as Harvard University, Brandeis University, Yale University (USA), The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Middlesex University (London), Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (Jerusalem), the Israeli Animation College (Tel Aviv) and more.
Ady shares his life with Bavat Marom, a world-renowned opera singer, their 2 children Lyle and Noot, and millions of cats.
Worldwide praise for Ady Cohen's work
"Your music shows a lot of imagination and skill. I think you are very talented"
(Lalo Schifrin, Grammy Award winning composer, "Mission: Impossible")
"I want to emphasize Ady's extraordinary talent as a film composer. He has a rare and special gift to give musical expression to visual images. He mastered a very unique art of perfect synchronization between score and visual actions. Films with his music seem to be designed, filmed and edited to a prerecorded music - a real music picture symbiosis, a dream of every director! Also, his music "works" immediately during the first screening (you don't need to listen 10 times to a CD before you start to like it!). I can only compare Ady's talent and achievements with the mastership of Nino Rota"
(Zbigniew Rybczynski, Academy Award winning director, "Tango")
"I can say without doubt that Mr. Cohen has consistently demonstrated extraordinary ability and garnered enormous national and international acclaim. His achievements have been widely recognized in the field of film music composition throughout his long career. He is certainly a star, conspicuous in his productivity, diligence, quality and in the recognition his works have received."
(Dr. Michael Beckerman, Carroll and Milton Petrie Chair of Music, Collegiate Professor of Music, New York University, Faculty of Arts and Science, Department of Music; Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence, New York Philharmonic)
"Ady is an incredible composer"
(Steve Schnur, President, EA Music Group)
"I regard him (Ady) as one of the best composers in the world today. Mr. Cohen writes wonderful and truly extraordinary music - original yet immediate, with unique sensitivity and enormous knowledge of various styles."
(Doron Salomon, principal guest conductor of the Israel Sinfonietta and lecturer on music, Ben Gurion University)
"I was completely taken by Ady's outstanding musicality and his ultimate mastering of any style needed. His range seems infinite: from classical to musicals, thrillers, romance and actually any genre one could imagine. I would mention one case in which I needed a unique combination of old Hollywood's adventure film music together with a sentimental intimate atmospheric theme, and in addition a kind of experimental oriental sound. All these in a very compressed time frame. Ady solved it very elegantly and by miracle managed to get a unity of style for these very different themes. All this in a completely unique, original and extremely effective way. Actually his musical ideas inspired my own cinematic ideas, and led me to new directions in the script."
(Gil Alkabetz, animation director and professor for animation at the HFF cinema academy, Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany)
"Yours is lovely music, Ady, and provides some hope for the future of film scoring, for one reason, because it gets away from the handful of tiresome and musically uninteresting clichés we are exposed to in virtually every new theatrical film. Your lyricism and humanity shine through!"
(William Rosar, editor, "The Journal of Film Music")
"I was made aware of Mr. Ady Cohen's genius years ago, as I heard the beautiful and unique music he was composing for motion pictures. Since then, Mr. Cohen continuously impressed me, and whoever was exposed to his work. Mr. Cohen's work is most unique, and of the highest musical level."
(Yaron Gershovsky, pianist and musical director, "The Manhattan Transfer")
"Ady Cohen, with his great talent, sensitivity, unique style and meticulous precision, re-defined for me the meaning of "a film composer". He breathed life into our animation creations. With incredible technical mastery he created music on a level we have never experienced before in our productions, bringing our work to a new level altogether"
(Noam Meshulam, animation director and head of Pitchi Poy Animation Productions, Israel)
"You are a marvelous composer with real breadth of expression. The strength of character in your scores and the inventiveness throughout all of your music are fully appreciated"
(Ronald H. Sadoff, Ph.D., Associate Professor & Director, Dept. of Music and Performing Arts - Scoring for Film and Multimedia, New York University)
"Mr. Cohen is an outstanding musical composer, whose expertise has graced some of the best feature films and animation films, as well as other productions. His unique ability, unmatched artistic skill, and innovative creativity have placed him in a class of his own and made him one of the most highly talented music composers in the film and television industry."
(Prof. Albert Hanan Kaminski, animator, Head of Master's Program in Integrated Design, Holon Institute of Technology, Israel; professor of animation - Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Shenkar Engineering, Design and Art College, Tel-Aviv University Film Department, Israel; Creative Director - Cinemon's Studios, Budapest, Hungary)
"I watched him at work adding finishing touches to the score for an animated feature film and was impressed by his professional flair for composing highly effective music to split-second accuracy. There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Cohen is a musician/artist of extraordinary ability."
(Dr. François Evans, Associate Professor in Music, Middlesex University, London, UK)
"During my time at ACUM, I have had the opportunity to closely follow Mr. Cohen's musical career and I consider him an extraordinary multi-talented musician. Mr. Cohen's music has emerged as a new fresh style in the Israeli scene of music for the stage, TV, and films. His accomplishments to date place him well above the norm for a person in his field and have been widely recognized on an international level."
(Yorik Ben David, musician and CEO of ACUM - the Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers of Music in Israel)
"In his 12 years of teaching in the Screen-Based Arts Department at Bezalel, Mr. Cohen has become one of our best and most beloved teachers. Ady Cohen possesses a vast knowledge of music and film, has ingenious dramatic sensibilities, and his background demonstrates extraordinary technological expertise. He is a master of the entire production process including scoring, arranging, and conducting the entire musical component of films."
(Prof. Rony Oren, animator and Head of the Animation Department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel, Emeritus)
"His distinct musical expertise, combined with work ethics of the highest level, make Ady Cohen a most desirable musician to work with"
(Yoram Levi, Bruckner-Yaar-Levi Advertising Agency)
"Throughout our collaboration, I was impressed with Ady's versatile musical talents and keen understanding of the particular needs of each production. In addition, Ady possesses an exceptional ability to meet deadlines and to perform under highly pressured schedules, all of this without compromising the high quality of the final result"
(Tamir Powell, Founder and CEO, Hop! TV)