We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Oshri Cohen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Oshri , thanks for joining us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

Interesting question! I am very happy both as an artist and as a creative. I am very pleased and happy with how my life looks today and I am proud of the achievements I have reached so far before the age of 27. My whole life I have been a musician, I started playing piano when I was 6 years old, writing songs, singing, producing music.
At the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic when the whole world shut down I looked for an opportunity to start something new and try to combine my musical side with my desire to promote artists and to represent my country.
Therefore, I applied for the position of Chief of Staff at the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles. I felt that there I could promote music and culture better from this uniqe position . I felt that as an artist and musician I understand the needs of artists to succeed big overseas. I made connections with senior figures in the entertainment industry and connected the right people to each other in both the music industry and the film industry. There is something very intriguing about the way the music industry in Hollywood perceives me, it doesn’t happen often that diplomats come with such broad knowledge of the industry in Hollywood. I knew that with great desire and passion, I could build cultural bridges between Israel and the US and show the international audience what Israeli artists have to offer. My work is absolutely very diverse by virtue of me being the Consul General’s Chief of Staff. I touch and am responsible for so many different subjects. From culture, to public diplomacy, relationships with American governors and members of Congress and Senate in our region, economic, medical and other collaborations. I really feel fortunate that I get up every morning and do what I love and make use of my abilities and knowledge as an artist in the best and most fulfilling way.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Sure, I would be happy to share my story and provide some background about myself and what led me to where I am today. I’m 26 years old, born and raised in Israel. I’ve been living in Los Angeles for over 3 years now, and before that I lived in New York for a while. As long as I can remember, I’ve always been involved in culture and entertainment, especially in the music industry. I’ve been playing piano since I was 6 years old, as I mentioned earlier. My parents really pushed me to excel at what I love, and from a very young age they arranged for me to have a private piano teacher who would come to our house every Tuesday for over a decade. My whole life revolved around music, playing, songwriting, music production for artists, and more. I worked with big artists and producers in Israel and lived in Tel Aviv. When coronavirus broke out, the entire music industry around the world collapsed – live shows were canceled, studio production sessions with artists moved to Zoom, which really hindered creativity. There’s something magical about working physically with artists and producers together in the studio. It’s very hard to do that through Zoom video. Many of my friends started losing a lot of money, and that’s exactly when I thought about embarking on a new and positive adventure following the coronavirus outbreak. The uncertainty of how long this would last concerned me, and I didn’t want to just wait for the pandemic to end. One night, I decided to try and look for a job at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and go on a diplomatic mission overseas. I knew it had to be either New York or Los Angeles, because I knew that’s where I could really leverage my professional expertise from the entertainment and music industry and bring it into my next role as a diplomat. The screening process for the position was long and difficult – a year-long process at the end of which I was accepted for the role. The Israeli Consul General in Los Angeles (the ambassador) heard about my background in culture and music and decided he wanted me to be his Chief of Staff. What is so unique and interesting about a city like Los Angeles is its cultural influence and its distinct impact on the global entertainment industry in general, and the music industry in particular. All the biggest record labels are based here, along with the top studios, producers, songwriters, industry leaders, and more. I’m happy and proud of the opportunity I was given to represent my country and promote its culture and art. However, it’s important to emphasize that as Chief of Staff at the consulate, I deal with all the areas the consulate is responsible for across a variety of issues. I engage directly with senior elected officials in the US in our region, from the local level with city mayors, all the way up to the national and state level working with Members of Congress and Senators from the states in our consulate’s jurisdiction – California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, and Hawaii. In the field of culture and art, I’ve worked on promoting and exposing Israeli artists in the US, with an emphasis on Hollywood where we’re based. I’ve promoted and connected Israeli artists with international success potential to influential people in the global music industry – senior executives from record labels, songwriters, producers, and more. Additionally, I’ve produced live performances of Israeli artists, some of whom we specifically flew in from Israel to perform here and expose them to an international audience and senior industry figures. A great example that I’m very proud of is a live performance by the singer Netta Barzilai, winner of the Eurovision Song Contest. Netta and I made history with the first ever performance by an Israeli artist live on NBA and ESPN! She performed during a LA Clippers vs Golden State Warriors game. Being backstage with one of the greatest NBA players in history, Steph Curry, was an unforgettable experience. We also brought in successful and famous artists from Israel like Harel Skaat and others. Another part of my job has been producing the consulate’s official events. As part of this, I’ve produced dozens of large, important events that received extensive local media coverage. Just this past May, we celebrated Israel’s 75th anniversary. We held a huge event with 2000 guests in Beverly Hills. Attendees included senior elected officials, greetings from LA Mayor Karen Bass, Senator Alex Padilla, and other leaders and ambassadors from around the world. During the event, several exceptional Israelis were highlighted on screen. One of them was Gal Gadot, who of course came to the event in person to accept her award. It was a great pleasure and fun to work with her. She’s a real Wonder Woman! Her receiving the award brought international news coverage around the globe! Seeing an event you worked on for months be covered with headlines around the world is heartwarming! Like last year, we held a 3-day event called ‘Scripted Israel’ that brought together promising Israeli producers and directors along with the top executives from the TV and film industry. Among them – the CEO of Netflix, senior executives from Apple TV, Amazon, Warner Studios, Universal, and more. It was amazing and even Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs flew in specially from Israel to attend and promote the event.

I’ve enjoyed 3 incredible years and am already thinking about my next step. I’m getting a lot of job offers from record labels and music companies in the industry, and I really hope and believe that soon I’ll be part of them and contribute my skills and abilities to advance these companies. I think that in regards to your question about what makes me different and unique, it’s the fact that I’m not originally from here – I wasn’t born and raised here, and yet over the past 3 years I’ve built connections with the most senior people in the global entertainment industry. I’ll say it again, my passion stems from two things – first, my great love for culture and music, and second, proving to myself and everyone else that nothing is impossible. You can achieve tremendous success if you just believe in yourself. I had every reason in the world to think I was attempting the impossible and just wasting my time. But I chose to leverage my knowledge and decided that I would do what I love most to the best of my abilities. Additionally, as a musician myself, I know what an artist needs to do and what kind of support they need in order to succeed on the international stage. This combination allowed me to see things from the perspective of the artists I want to promote, and harness that to get senior industry figures on board for their journey.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

To be honest, no. my best resource for my creativity was myself only. but i’ve got lots of input from industry figures that I have met over the years. Within the last decade, long before I got here to Los Angeles, I started deeply researching who the most senior and important industry figures were. I’m fortunate to say that I can now call many people that I previously only read about on Wikipedia, Forbes Magazine, or publications like Variety or Billboard close friends of mine today. Most of my knowledge I gained through social media, especially Instagram. For years I followed hundreds of entertainment industry people, more and less important, and that’s how I really built up a mental picture of who’s friends with who, because I was watching their stories everyday, slowly understanding over the years the connections between people – who has an impressive title but isn’t really powerful, versus people who seem less important but have lots of connections and influence. I think this kind of knowledge is absolutely power. And anyone who doesn’t understand that to be part of any industry, not just entertainment, you need to know everything about your field – if you don’t know the players then it’s just not your territory, or you don’t really want it badly enough.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I’m a music freak and always have been as you’ve probably figured out by now. What drives me is the desire to make and promote new music and artists, to create the best and most unique music possible with them, at a time when it’s become very hard to innovate unfortunately. But that’s precisely my fuel – the desire to make music that people will say wow, we’ve never heard anything like this before! Regular people, music listeners, have no idea how much work goes into every song, album, music video, promotion, marketing, PR, radio, etc. Making music for living is a job for the brave hearted only. It’s not always highly lucrative financially. From the outside people think the music industry is glamorous but it’s not. It’s an industry that requires you to not give up where it’s easiest to give up, and a lot of patience. People work a decade for one good song. My goal is to bring lots of good music into the world, because music is the spirit of the soul.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Oshriicohen