Moshe Cotel

(Wikipedia) - Moshe Cotel (February 20, 1943 - October 24, 2008) 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. Continued

Photo: Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University