Sarah Goldberg Cohen is an Israeli composer and painter from Jerusalem, and from 2006 she lives in Eilat.
She received her first shock at the age of seven.She was,as usual,singing a melody with the note names when suddenly her friend imitated her and began also to sing,but with the wrong note names! So little Sarah discovered that, unlike her,not everyone hears and knows the note names of the music he is listening to...
She lived for a long time with the Gypsies in Granada, Spain, an influence that can be heard in her music, especially in the works “Suite of Granada” and “Pieces of flamenco for the piano”. It was also from the Gypsies that she learned to play the flamenco guitar and to dance flamenco.
She studied the classical guitar with Hajim Asulin at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Israel, and with Karl Heinz Böttner at the Cologne University of Music, Germany.
There she had also classes in Piano,her childhood instrument,and singing lessons.
At this time Cologne was the center of experimental music. Karl Heinz Böttner played in an ensemble for contemporary music. There were also Mauricio Kagel and Karl Heinz Stockhausen.
Sarah Goldberg Cohen took part in a requiem composed by Olivier Vivien and supervised by Karl Heinz Stockhausen. Her role was to improvise singing (she took voice and piano lessons at Cologne, too) and represent a dead woman in different periods of her life.
With Mauricio Kagel there was a week long live broadcast for the radio. The musicians had the task to communicate with each other in different ways while performing, and to change expressions exactly at the moment Kagel instructed them to do so. Some students felt too much pressure and had a break down. Sarah, who likes to improvise, enjoyed herself.
A completely different musical influence had Sarah from her uncle George Aubanel who, apart from producing Django Rheinhardt and performing with Edith Piaf, also collected folklore. Uncle George's
home was always full of warmth and spirituality.
Sarah taught herself to draw and paint. She likes to express herself in many fields of art; composing, playing, writing, singing, dancing, drawing...
With her husband Santi, guitarist and comic book artist, Sarah's been touring in the world and has been covered by radio and television.
Journeys to different countries inspired Sarah to learn languages and she's currently speaking seven languages.
In 2014 she traveled to Madagascar and got a lot of inspiration from the instrument VALIHA, Harp of bamboo, which she is now playing and enjoying .
Today Sarah lives with her husband in Eilat, and where once Gypsies and the fortress of Alhambra were her source of inspiration, nowadays it's the beautiful colors of the desert mountains and the Red Sea corals and magnificent sea life. They are promises of more music and new paintings...