Ady Cohen
Ady Cohen
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.
