A native of Los Angeles, Jeffery Cotton has been composer-in-residence of the Boston-based Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra as well as St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble in New York City. His first new work for Metamorphosen, Lyra, was praised by the Boston Globe as "a gentle, confessional hymn to music of great beauty." Cotton wrote seven works for the group. He also composed numberous chamber works for St. Luke's.

Cotton studied with Hans Werner Henze from 1983 to 1985 at the Academy of Music in Cologne, Germany, as a Fulbright Scholar. Later he studied with George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Master of Arts and Ph.D. in 1989.

In 1990 Jeffery Cotton returned to Germany as a Guggenheim Fellow, and lived in Berlin during the German Reunification. In 1991 he returned to the United States and settled in New York, which is when he became the first composer-in-residence of St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. During his tenure there, Cotton created the ensemble’s "Second Helpings" series, hailed by the New York Times as "something truly different".

A recipient of many awards and grants, including most recently a Camargo Foundation Fellowship, the Aaron Copland Award, a Fromm Foundation commission, and a Bogliasco Foundation Grant, Jeffery Cotton’s music has been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, and the Tucson Symphony.

Recent works include a trio for flute, viola and harp, commissioned by the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, a brief overture for orchestra for the Tucson Symphony, a duo for violin and percussion for the Tucson Chamber Music Festival. He will be writing his second string quartet for the Cypress Quartet in San Francisco for the 2010-2011 season.

Jeffery Cotton is founder and president of Wired Musician, Inc., a website design and hosting company specializing in the needs of the professional musician.