Tsippi Fleischer is one of Israsel’s major composers. Her oeuvre encompasses four decades of creative activity in all the major genres, reflecting the many varied trends in contemporary musical and theatrical artistic dynamics in Israel and throughout the world. Her works appeared on CDs produced by international labels and by the Israel Music Institute, and achieved international recognition.
Fleischer was born in Haifa in 1946. The city’s Arab-Jewish environment left an indelible mark on her compositions. She began her formal studies in piano and music theory at the Rubin Conservatory in Haifa, and graduated from the Oriental studies stream at Haifa’s Reali School. She later pursued academic studies in music, Oriental studies and linguistics. Her prominent mentors in the field of music in Israel included Yitzhak Sadai, Noam Sheriff and Mendi Rodan.
Fleischer’s style has diversified greatly during her creative life. The early beginnings in the 1970s are typified by a search for a compositional style in which to incorporate her Oriental studies. The 1980s brought the formation and crystallization of this style, marked by a finely-honed tonality and images of the Israeli landscape. By the late 1980s her work reached new heights with musical settings of literary Arabic texts, most prominently in her cantata Like Two Branches. In the 1990s, her vision deepened and expanded historically and geographically, incorporating elements from the Semitic world and beyond, including references to ancient cultures. The early decades of the 21st century are marked by the composer’s entry into the large-scale genres of symphony and opera, allowing her to expand her artistic vision.
Fleischer is also notable for her active contribution to the ideology of music education in Israel, a contribution which finds its expression both in her educational work and in her many publications on music education and on Hebrew song.
Today, Fleischer continues her intensive activity – both as a composer, reaching new heights with the recent completion of her grand opera Adapa, and in summarizing her life’s work in the study of Hebrew song. Recently, she published an online educational kit based on her children’s opera Oasis.
Benjamin Yusupov was born in Dushanbe, Tajikistan in 1962. From 1981 to 1990 he studied piano, composition, music theory and conducting at the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory in Moscow with Roman Ledeniov, Yuri Fortunatov, Yuri Kholopov, and with Dmitri Kitajenko, one of today’s well-known conductors. He received his Ph.D. degree at Bar-Ilan University (Israel) in 2001.
Yusupov was awarded the Clone Prize (1992), the Sherover Award (1993), the Israeli Prime Minister Prize (1999),During the next seasons large-scale compositions by Benjamin Yusupov are being performed by such artists as Yuri Temirkanov and Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Mariss Jansons and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski and London Philharmonic, Kazushi Ono and Israel Philharmonic, Peter Oundjian and Toronto Symphony, Eiji Ono and NDR Radiophilharmonie.
His works have been performed by the New World Symphony, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Israel Chamber Orchestra, Dresdner Sinfoniker, Lisbon Symphony, Brandenburger Symphoniker, Orchestra Teatro Communale di Bologna, Anhaltische Philharmonie, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Belgrade Philharmonic, Bogota Philharmonic and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Recent seasons have also been performances in Focus Festival, Julliard Theater (2005), Juventus Festival, France (2005), Menton Festival (2005), Zagreb Biennale (2001), Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspielle (2004), Almeida Festival, London (1994), Paris Rostrum (1990), and large number of Israeli festivals
Yedid has been acclaimed as one of the world’s leading composers of the Third Stream (Bailey, AAJ 2006). A master pianist and shrewd composer he has multiple awards to his name including the top two prizes for composers and performers in Israel. In 2009 he received in Israel the Landau Prize For the Arts and in 2007 he was awarded the prestigious Israel Prime Minister’s Prize for Classical Composers. He also won first composition prize at the International Oud Festival for his work Oud Bass Piano Trio and the first composition prize at the 17th International Harp Contest (regarded as the most important harp competition in the world) for his solo harp work Out to Infinity. Yedid was awarded The Judith Wright Artist in Residence grant (2009) and was a composer in residence at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2008. Yedid has also been awarded grants from Arts Queensland, the West Australian Department of Culture and the Arts and The Australian Council for the Arts.
Inspired by literature, philosophy, art and landscapes, Yedid’s compositions form a narrative of pictures, textures and colours. His music incorporates a wide spectrum of contemporary and ancient styles and creates a unique integration between improvisation, Arabic genres and contemporary Western classical music. A confluence between the Maqamat (the Arabic music modal system), heterophonic textures of Arabic genres and compositional approaches of jazz and contemporary Western classical music have been created to produce an original sound.
Ake Holmquist (Norra Skåne, Sweden) wrote that “Yedid integrates specific stylistic influences into a personal created unity. The manner in which he describes folkloristic influences and melancholic specific themes can remind of Béla Bartók; improvisatory float of hovering à la Keith Jarret”.
Yitzhak Yedid has performed at the Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Jordan Hall in Boston. He has performed his compositions with many ensembles in festivals and venues across Europe, Canada, the USA, Asia and Africa. His music has received hundreds of reviews in the international media. Eleven CDs of Yedid’s compositions have been released by prestigious international publishers and distributers including Challenge Records International, Sony, Naxos, -btl-, Muse, MCI and Kaleidos, and more than 300 reviews of them have been published in the international music media. His latest CD was an award nominee for Most Original Australian Jazz Album in the 2013 Australian Jazz Bell Awards.
Dr Yitzhak Yedid has been based in Australia teaching and mentoring university music students since 2007. Currently, Yedid lecturers at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University.
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Baniel graduated in conducting and composition from the Rubin Academy of music, Jerusalem, Israel in continuation with her education with composer Henk Alkema at the High Academy for the Arts in Utrecht, Holland. She is also a sound engineer receiving her Diploma at the institute of audio research, Manhattan, New York and a Video artist graduating post-production and graphics motion with Eran Stern the head of the Motion Graphics department at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Tel Aviv.
Baniel is specializes in composing and a multimedia productions. Her multimedia concert-performances integrates music with theater and visual images. Among the multimedia concert-performances the work 'Different Trains' which was performed by the ICSQ (Israel Contemporary String Quartet) in concerts and festivals in Europe and the USA and was highly praised by the critics.
Winning the 'Classic-like' 2012 award, Baniel became the artistic director and the house composer of the prestige Tel-Aviv Soloist ensemble during 2012-2015. Baniel was the artistic director and manger (2002-2009) of the acclaimed Israel contemporary string quartet (ICSQ). Under her artistic direction the quartet had won first prizes in international and domestic competitions.
For her achievements Baniel had received grants and awards from The State of Israel's Ministry of Education and Culture, the 'Pais' cultural organization and the America-Israel Cultural foundation among others. Her music is being often heard in the national radio stations and is being performed widely by Israel's highly esteemed orchestras, choirs and ensembles in Israel and abroad.
composer and pianist based in Boston. Described as “a master composer… (she) has a fine ear for sound as well as sure compositional technique” (David Schulenberg, The Boston Musical Intelligencer), she is the recipient of many international awards including the Rosenblum Prize for Promising Young Artist 2016 by the Tel Aviv Municipalitythe, Klon Award for young composers granted by the Israeli Composers League, CIRCE Composition Competition, London Ear Festival, North-South Consonance Composition Competition, International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition, and she also has consecutively been awarded scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation both in piano and composition (with honors). Her “Obsession” string quartet was featured in Castleton Festival after being selected by Maestro Lorin Maazel. She was selected to be the Composer Fellow of Collage New Music for 2015-2016. Compositions by Talia have been performed around the world by many ensembles such as: Collage New Music, Lydian String Quartet, North-South Consonance, Meitar Ensemble, Les Cris de Paris, Atar trio, Ensemble Recherche du Midi, and Uroboros Ensemble.
Her music was presented also in many festivals such as Vox Feminae Festival, Asian Composers League Festival, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts, Castleton Festival, London Ear Festival, and Visible Sounds Congress.
She participated in various classes such as analysis classes at the Conservatoire National Superieur De Musique Et De Danse de Paris, the Royaumont composition course at the Royaumont Abbey in France, Contemporary Encounters in Tel-Aviv, the conference Matrix on Tour in Montreal, the IRCAM workshop at Boston University with Grégoire Lorieux, and the Composers Conference at Wellesley College guided by Mario Davidovsky. .
Judith Shatin is a composer whose music has been described as “…highly inventive…on every level, hugely enjoyable and deeply involving with a constant sense of surprise…” (The Washington Post). She draws on expanded sonic palettes, from the ripping of tape, to the sounds of machines, to the calls of animals, as well as developing expanded techniques for traditional instruments. Timbral exploration and collaboration are central to her musical life, as is her ongoing study of music perception and the application of its results to her work. She often intertwines traditional instruments with new media, as in her Black Moon, for conductor-controlled electronics and orchestra. Her music has been commissioned by organizations including the Barlow Endowment, Carnegie Hall, the Fromm Foundation and the Library of Congress. Ensembles such as the National and Richmond Symphonies, Kronos and Cassatt Quartets, Da Capo Chamber Players, the Dutch Hexagon Ensemble, and Scottish Voices have also commissioned it. She has been honored with four composer fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, while a two-year retrospective of her music, culminating in the premiere of her folk oratorio, Coal, was sponsored by the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Arts Partners program. Her music can be heard on the Centaur, Neuma, New World, Ravello, and Sonora labels, with two portrait albums on Innova. It has been featured at festivals including Aspen, BAM Next Wave, Grand Teton, Havana in Spring, Moscow Autumn, Seal Bay and West Cork.
In demand as a master teacher, Shatin has served as BMI composer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University, Senior Composer at the Wellesley Composers Forum, and Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She is also a strong advocate for her fellow composers, and served as President of the American Women Composers, on the board of the League of Composers/ISCM and the American Composers Alliance, and on the advisory board of the IAWM (International Alliance for Women in Music). Educated at Douglass College (AB, Phi Beta Kappa), The Juilliard School (MM) and Princeton University (PhD), Shatin undertook additional studies as a Crofts Composition Fellow at Tanglewood, as well as studies at the Aspen Music Festival. The founder of the Virginia Center for Computer Music, Judith Shatin is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor at the University of Virginia.
is an Israeli composer, conductor and cellist whose music has been performed far and wide, including the Aspen and Norfolk Chamber Music Festivals, The Tel Aviv Chamber Music Society, Musica Nova, the Israeli Composers League and many others. His commissions include those from the Aims Music Festival in Barcelona, the Beer Sheva Sinfonieta, Contempo Music Festival, Kfar Blum Music Festival and performers such as Rivka Golani and the Aviv String Quartet. Born in Brazil, Wassserman was educated at the Rubin Academy in Israel, and at the Mannes College of Music and The Juilliard School in New York. He is currently music director and conductor of the Ramat Gan Symphonie Orchestra, and Tel Aviv Chamber Music Society as well as the principal of the Ramat Gan Music Center.
"In my music I convey the gamut of human emotions, describing the highs and lows of life—the tragedy and the comedy, the hope and dismay—contemplating the majestic beauty of nature as a contrast for the darkest corners of the soul"
Russian-born Ilya Levinson graduated from the Moscow State Conservatory, where he studied composition with Alexander Pirumov and Edison Denisov. After immigrating to the US in 1988, Levinson completed a Ph.D. in Composition at the University of Chicago including instruction from Ralph Shapey, Shulamit Ran, John Eaton, and Howard Sandroff.
Levinson is Assistant Professor at the Music Department of Columbia College Chicago and Music Director and Co-Founder of the New Budapest Orpheum Society, an ensemble-in-residence at The University of Chicago. The group specializes in performing music of the Jewish Cabaret. Their two CD’s are recorded on the Cedille label. Ilya Levinson is composer-in-residence with American Music Festivals, an organization committed to promoting cultural exchange and American music.
Levinson’s catalogue includes operas, musicals, symphonic music and chamber music, film scores and original music for theatre. Levinson’s music has been performed by the Russian State Philharmonic Orchestra, Yaroslavl Orchestra, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Sarajevo Philharmonic, Duo Montagnard and Trio Atar among others. Ilya Levinson was a winner of the 1994 Midwest Composers Competition and recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships in Music Composition in 1997 and 2003.
Studied music, education and philosophy in the Hebrew university in Jerusalem as well as composition in the Frantz Liszt academy in Budapest. Among his teachers were Abel Erlich, Mark Kopitman, Gidon Levinson and Enriko Yosef. Eran composed many songs and cooperated with leading singers, poets and musicians around Israel and Europe. Some of these songs were published on Albums. His chamber music works were performed in Israel, Italy, Hungary, England and Austria and recorded by the Inbar piano trio, Atar piano trio and other ensembles.
As music educator Eran Worked as a teacher and staff member in “Michael Educational project” , as Pedagogic director of HASSADNA Music conservatory in Jerusalem, as a fellow in the “Mandel” Institute for Educational Leadership in Jerusalem. He established the CHAVRUTAV educational Program for teaching Hebrew Poetry and Music in elementary schools and was representative of the Educational Department of The Jewish Agency for Israel and the central Representative in Central/East Europe region. Eran in the pedagogic director of the MAALOT music center and active in promoting concert music, producing concerts and lecture concerts around Israel.
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