Yuval Cohen is the oldest of the three Cohen siblings — ahead of clarinetist/saxophonist Anat Cohen and trumpeter Avishai Cohen — and, unlike them, the one who moved back to Israel rather than settling permanently in New York. He studied at the Tel Aviv Conservatory and the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, then served in the Israeli Army Orchestra from 1991 to 1994 as a player, arranger, and conductor. He went on to Berklee College of Music, graduating summa cum laude in 1996, and began a master's degree at the Manhattan School of Music on a full scholarship in 1997.

That same year, a spinal cord tumor put him in the hospital for surgery that nearly ended his playing career. He switched from alto to soprano saxophone during his recovery, because soprano was what his body could still manage — an origin story for his primary instrument that has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with necessity. During that same recovery period he also attended law school at Tel Aviv University, and he still practices as a lawyer today, alongside a full teaching career: he heads jazz studies at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and at the Israeli Conservatory of Tel Aviv, and teaches at Thelma Yellin High School and the New School's Tel Aviv branch. He completed a Master's in Composition at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem in 2010.

His own catalog as a leader is compact: Freedom (2007, Anzic Records) — his debut, which features guest turns from both Anat Cohen and Avishai Cohen alongside guitarist Gilad Hekselman (also profiled separately on JazzProfiles.com) — and Song Without Words (2010, Anzic Records), a duo record with pianist Shai Maestro — already profiled separately on JazzProfiles.com — that stands as Maestro's earliest own-name credit as a co-leader, predating his 2012 trio debut by two years. Alongside his own records, he has recorded across four decades with his siblings as 3 Cohens, the family group's catalog running from One (2003) through Braid (2007), Family (2011), and Tightrope (2013).

In 2025 he released Winter Poems, his debut for ECM Records — recorded in September 2023 at Studios La Buissonne with pianist Tom Oren, bassist Alon Near, and drummer Alon Benjamini, and produced by Manfred Eicher. That makes Yuval the third and last of the three Cohen siblings to record for the label, closing a loop that started with his brother and sister years earlier. Along the way he has picked up Israel's Landau Prize for Jazz Performance (2010) and the Prime Minister's Award for Jazz Composers (2017).

Cohen's playing is shaped as much by circumstance as by taste: forced onto soprano saxophone by a medical emergency in his late twenties, he built a career around an instrument that rewards the clean, attentive tone his classical training gave him. His own writing sits inside a lyrical, chamber-jazz register consistent with the ECM aesthetic his 2025 debut for the label places him in — alongside pianists Tom Oren and collaborators drawn from a tight circle of longtime Israeli musical acquaintances rather than a rotating cast of session players.