Avital Cohen- Flutist and sound artist

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Avital's repertoire as a flutist includes classic and interdisciplinary contemporary works. She performs as a soloist and as a chamber musician with various ensembles in Germany, France, Switzerland, Japan, USA, Canada and Baku. Pieces were composed especially for her by Turkar Gasimzada, Rufat Khalilov, Andreas Sorg, Alfred Zimmerlin and others.

Avital Cohen - Flutist and sound artist In recent years Avital is in the process of developing her own artistic identity, from a flutist who performs classical music to a performer, for whom playing the flute is only one of the tools for creating a performance. Avital explored the use of visual aspects in playing as an audio expression tool, deviating in the process as far away as possible from the defined, clean classical sounds; searching for worlds of sounds, effects, multiphonics etc.; creating a “breathing language" through concentrating in this one basic element of both life and playing. Avital works with composers to create a language which goes beyond the defined notes and to perform audio-visual language in a musical context. In the last two years Avital studied towards a Master’s Degree in Expanded Theater (HKB), trying to explore how to use her bodily presence onstage as a non-acting, non-dancing musician. Avital tried in her projects, among other things, to let her body play without forcing it to do so, to look for the bodily energy that drives to create, to change, to make things happen. In her work Air notes (ACT performance Festival, Bern, Zurich and Basel; ThiK Theater, Baden) Avital follows the roots of sound that are free from the boundaries of written musical notes. In another work, tweets (a scene from the play Light, What? by Sivan Cohen) as a character of a "TV documentary" playing Messiaen’s The Blackbird on the flute, she explored the concept of "playing a flute, no sound". Recent works as a performer also include: Write A Work in Progress (by Sivan Cohen, Master‘s project ,HKB) - flutes, sound art, improvisation, production. Breath (composed by Turkar Gasimzada in the inspiration of Samuel Beckett's play, HKB in cooperation with the IGNM, Bern; ThiK Theater, Baden) - creation of the ‘Breath Language’ and effects of the piece, performer. Anziehen Ausziehen [Dress and undress], an interdisciplinary performence inspired by the early Tamil poetry of Sangam Kavidaigal (Direction: Bharathi Mayandi, HKB; Zwischen Bühne, Lucerne) - flutes, improvisation, musical consultation Tag der öffnen Tür (a performance in ‘foreign language’ [‘Fremdsprache’], direction: Ensemble Talking Straight, HKB) - performer (flute teacher) Das Experiment Aufmerksamkeit [The attention experiment], an audiovisual interactive performance with flute and mobile phones (Direction: Maximilian Hanisch, HKB) - concept together with Maximilian Hanisch and Samuel Mittags, flute. Neuentwicklung (concept and sound art: Leo Hoffman) - flutes, Improvisation Ghost of chance (Direction: Mirko Borscht, Auawirleben theatre festival, Bern) - flutes, live electronics, improvisation. Avital holds a ‘Diplome d’exécution’ (with distinction) from the École Normale de Musique de Paris, a B.Mus from the Rubin Academy Jerusalem, an ‘artistic diploma’ with subsequent ‘soloist’s diploma’ from the Musikhochschule Mannheim and a ‘Certificate of Advanced Studies in Sound Arts' from the ‘Hochschule der Künste in Bern’. Avital studied the flute with Prof. Shigenori Kudo, Prof. Raymond Guiot, Prof. Avner Biron, Jean-Michel Tanguy, Aurèle Nicolet and Robert Dick. In addition, she has taken part in master classes with Alain Marion, Pierre-Yves Artaud, Maxence Larrieu, Robert Stallman and others. She studied sound arts with Daniel Weissberg.