Noot Cohen, born in Tel Aviv in 2006, is in her second semester studying voice at the mdw. She was one of the recipients of the Artists Solidarity Program Europe scholarship from Austria’s Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs. This scholarship programme is intended for artists whose work and existence are severely threatened by war. On 28 April 2025, Noot showed her musical project as part of the programme’s concluding presentation at the mdw’s Klangtheater.

The young singer has been surrounded by music her whole life and comes from a family of musicians. Her mother is the opera singer Bavat Marom, her father the film composer Ady Cohen. Noot’s brother Lyle Cohen is also a composer, and many relatives are (multi-)instrumentalists. Noot began playing piano at the age of four. Her grandmother was the pianist Ruth Mense, who was close friends with Leonard Bernstein. She also performed with him many times and assisted him with his music until she died in 1988. “My grandmother was the only pianist in the family before me. She is a great inspiration for me, even though I was never able to meet her,” says Noot. It was not initially clear, however, that Noot’s path would lead her to classical music. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a pop singer,” she recalls. “I wasn’t interested in classical music or opera.” Her first singing experience was as a ten-year-old in the Bat-Kol Girls’ Choir of the Israeli Conservatory of Music, in her hometown of Tel Aviv. The choir was invited to sing in the Israeli Opera’s production of “Carmen” in Tel Aviv. It was a key moment in Noot’s life, she says: “When I stood on the stage with the orchestra below me, in a house filled with thousands of people, I was hooked. The rehearsals, everyone involved both onstage and backstage, and the singing in a foreign language made a great impression on me. I decided: That’s what I want to do with my life.” At the age of eleven, she started taking voice lessons with her mother, who remained her teacher before Noot moved to Vienna.

The entrance examination in the mdw’s Department of Vocal Studies and Music Theatre provided Noot with an insight into her future course of study. “The examination took four days, and we were on several stages,” she explains. “You had to demonstrate different types of singing, in addition to improvisation, acting, and theory. I liked how they worked in the department.” To be accepted, candidates also need a B1-level proficiency in German. In a record time of three months, Noot brought her basic knowledge of the language up to this level and in October 2024 was able to begin her studies. “The roughly twenty students in my year coalesced into a close group. Before I moved to Vienna, I was afraid I would be all alone here and homesick. But I found a new home,” says Noot happily. What she appreciates about her professor, Daniela Fally, is her supportive and genuine manner. “Even the first trial lesson went very well,” Noot says. “We’re a perfect match.”

For the Artists Solidarity Program Europe, Noot created a song cycle with her own compositions. She first attempted to compose an opera when she was eleven. It remained unfinished, but Noot could now draw on a reservoir of ideas and continue to develop the motifs. “The songs are about finding your way around a new place. It is the situation that I find myself in, but other people can identify with this as well,” she explains. She wrote the Hebrew lyrics for her songs herself, one is by her mother. For the performance, Noot was accompanied by the pianist and mdw student David Mařatka. The young singer deliberately wanted to keep the format simple because, as she says: “The connection between voice and piano intensely conveys the music’s profound emotions.” The three-part cycle spans a large emotional arc from the melancholic to the dramatic and features songs that are rich in contrast as well as cheerful. For the two songs in German, she used texts from Goethe. At the beginning of her compositional work, she was faced with many questions about how she should even proceed. “I tried singing the texts and improvising on them. That really helped me, because I think melodically,” says Noot, explaining her creative process.

On the day of the terrorist attack on Israel, 7 October 2023, Noot was not in Israel and due to the uncertain situation there was not able to return for several weeks. She and her Israeli musician friends find comfort in music, she says: “Making music together helps you stabilize yourself in this kind of situation.” Noot is convinced of the unifying power of art:

I have met artists from many countries and was thus able to gain a good impression of these countries. The power of music and art connects people from different places.

Of her plans for the future, Noot says: “I like to dream big!” She loves being involved in projects and initiating new ones. “I like being surrounded by people,” she says. “It is exciting to work with musicians I can feel artistically connected to.” Her dream, she says, is to become established as an opera singer, ideally in leading roles: “Standing on a wonderful stage with great acoustics, with an orchestra in front of me and thousands of people in the audience, is my vision of the absolute high point in my life.”

Music lovers could experience Noot’s extraordinary vocal talent and her self-composed song cycle on 28 April 2025, 5.30 p.m., at the mdw’s Klangtheater.

Text: Isabella Gaisbauer