[4] Cohen's music has been commissioned by chamber ensembles including: the Cassatt String Quartet,[5] Verdehr Trio,[6] Franciscan String Quartet,[7] Chesapeake Chamber Music,[8] Grneta Ensemble,[9] Wave Hill Trio,[10] Bronx Arts Ensemble,[11] and Brooklyn Philharmonic Brass Quintet;[12] by choruses including the New York Virtuoso Singers,[13] Canticum Novum Singers,[14] Syracuse Children's Chorus,[7] St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City,[15] Zamir Chorale of Boston,[16] Usdan Center Chorus,[17] the Cantors Assembly of America,[14] HaZamir: The International Jewish High School Choir,[18] and the Westchester Youth Symphony.
A cantor himself, Cohen's songs and his Passover Cantata V'higad'ta L'vincha display a linguistic fluidity and a melodic gift that hints at what the Hebrew liturgy might be like today if Britten had changed faiths.
2, likewise, uses traditional structures, namely sonata form in the outer movements encasing a slow and lyrical elegy to his late father.
The composer's self-described synthesis of art, religion and family in this piece reveals a very personal modernism that makes for more difficult listening -- imagine Bartok spiked with Hebraic modal and metric shifts -- but offers greater emotional rewards as well.
He is the composer of three operatic works: the 2013 opera Steal a Pencil for Me, based on a true story of love in a WWII concentration camp, which Lucid culture described as "…mesmerizingly hypnotic, intricately contrapuntal" music, with moments of "…Bernard Herrmann-esque, shivery terror…".