Gold was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and lived most of his adult life in Manhattan.
[citation needed] Gold attended public schools and majored in music at CCNY (today part of the City University of New York).
He received his masters from Yale University School of Music[citation needed] where he studied with Ellsworth Grumman, Mel Powell and H. Leroy Baumgartner.
He was a member of the tonality-based Delian Society[4] but also composed at times in a structurally based atonal style[citation needed].
Gold died from an undetermined form of dementia on March 2, 2022, at the age of 85.