with various orchestras including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and the Haifa Symphony Orchestra. In 2004 Cohen completed his postgraduate degree in violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London. The following year Cohen joined the conducting class of the Royal Academy and in 2007, aged 23, he completed his conducting studies there. Among his teachers were George Hurst, Colin Metters and Sir Colin Davis. Whilst at the Royal Academy, Cohen formed the Eden Sinfonia, a student orchestra with which he performed numerous concerts, including, in 2008, a performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. West-Eastern Divan Orchestra Cohen joined the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in the summer of 2003, aged 19. He was a member of the first violin section for the next eight years and played in more than twelve international tours. Among many other concerts, Cohen participated in the memorable Ramallah Concert of 2005. Between 2008 and 2011 Cohen became assistant conductor to Daniel Barenboim in the preparation of a Beethoven symphonies cycle as well as major works by Schoenberg and Boulez with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. In the summers of 2010–11 Cohen assisted Barenboim in creating a young version of the Divan Orchestra called the Al Andalus Orchestra which he conducted for two summers. Lucerne Festival Academy Cohen served as an assistant conductor to Pierre Boulez and the musicians of the Ensemble InterContemporain at the Lucerne Festival Academy from 2009 to 2013. During his time at the Lucerne Festival Academy he also assisted such conductors as Péter Eötvös, Susanna Mälkki, Pablo Heras-Casado, and David Robertson. From 2011 to 2013 Cohen also took part in the Lucerne Festival Academy Composer Project in which Pierre Boulez oversaw the commission, creation, composition, rehearsal and performance of new compositions. One of these: Sawti'l zaman by Benjamin Attahir was dedicated to Boulez and to Cohen and conducted by Cohen at the Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre in Lucerne in September 2013. Awards and prizes Cohen won the America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship consecutively from 1995 to 2007. As a violinist Cohen received the 2004 DipRAM award for outstanding final recital (violin) from the Royal Academy of Music, London. As a conductor Cohen won the first prize at the Admont International Conducting Competition, Austria (2007), the first prize at the Aviv Competition in Israel, the Yuri Aharonowich Prize (2008), and the third prize at the Evgeny Svetlanov Conducting Competition,