Moshe Cotel

Who was Moshe Cotel?

Moshe Cotel was a pianist and composer whose music was strongly influenced by his Jewish roots. Cotel moved from his Jewish roots to focus on music for most of his life, and received his rabbinic ordination and synagogue pulpit in the years before his death.

Morris Cotel was born February 20, 1943 in Baltimore, and was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family. As a youth, Cotel was simultaneously enrolled in the Talmudic Academy of Baltimore and the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University where he studied music and took college-preparatory classes, having enrolled at the age of 9. He wrote a 200-page symphony as a 13-year-old, to the astonishment of his piano teacher at Peabody who did not believe him until he pulled the completed score out of his bag.

He earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the Juilliard School in New York City, in 1964 and 1965 respectively. Cotel won the American Academy in Rome Prize for music composition at age 23, and studied art in Italy for two years. Cotel had been a professor of music composition at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore from 1972, until he retired in 2000. After moving to New York City in 1977, he retained his position at Peabody, commuting to Baltimore on a weekly basis.