Born in Tucson, Arizona, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and Amherst, Massachusetts, Douglas J. Cuomo began playing the trumpet in grade school and switched to guitar at the age of 12.
The New York Times wrote that Cuomo's "elegiac and eerie" score "blends electronically treated classical fragments and vintage kitsch, suggests the breaking down and reconstitution of matter into something ominous and uncontrollable.
"[3] After Atomic Opera, he scored fifteen productions for the Roundabout Theatre, including The Women, Design For Living, Hamlet, The Visit, and the Tony Award-winning Anna Christie.
[5] Cuomo also composed the theme to Sex and the City (HBO), praised by The New Yorker magazine for its "unusual, edgy salsa flavor" and the saxophone quartet music that opens and closes Now with Bill Moyers (PBS).
[9] In addition to Arjuna’s Dilemma, his concert works include a Kyrie for And on Earth, Peace (2007) commissioned by the vocal ensemble Chanticleer, premiered by the group at the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and recorded on Warner Music; and Fortune for The Young People's Chorus under the direction of Francisco Nunez.
The Pittsburgh Opera mounted the world premiere of his monodrama for tenor, Savage Winter (originally titled Ashes and Snow), in 2018, with Eric Ferring as the protagonist and Jonathan Moore directing.