Kozinn notes that "Sirota’s musical language is personal and undogmatic, in the sense that instead of aligning himself with any of the competing contemporary styles, he follows his own internal musical compass." Sirota was born in New York on October 13, 1949. As a high school student he took composition lessons at the Juilliard School. Sirota went on to the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, where he worked with Richard Hoffman and Joseph Wood, and earned double music degree in piano and composition. A Watson Fellowship enabled him to travel to Paris, where he gave concerts and became one of the last students of the famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, by then in her eighties. Back in the U.S., Sirota studied composition with Earl Kim and Leon Kirchner at Harvard, earning a PhD. His chamber works have been especially widely performed, with credits from more than 20 nationally significant groups, and his music has been programmed at music festivals including those at Tanglewood, Aspen, Cooperstown, New York, Bowdoin College, and the University of Missouri. His orchestral music has been played by the symphony orchestras of Seattle, Lincoln (Nebraska), Vermont, New Haven, and St. Petersburg (Russia), as well as major conservatory orchestras as far afield as Singapore. Sirota has taught at the Peabody Institute, New York University (where he was chairman of the music department), Boston University (where he was director of the School of Music), and, from 2005 to 2012, as president at the Manhattan School of Music. Sirota's works have been recorded on the Capstone, Albany, New Voice, and Gasparo labels, and his String Quartet No. 2 ("American Pilgrimage") was included on the American String Quartet's 2018 album American Romantics.

Sirota's children, Jonah and Nadia Sirota, are both noted violists; the latter's activities extend to pop, rock, and bluegrass music (she appears on Chris Thile's 2017 album Thanks for Listening) as well as classical works. ~ James Manheim, Rovi