29 Facts About Yitzhak Yedid

Yitzhak Yedid is an Israeli-Australian composer of contemporary classical music.

The recipient of numerous awards, Yedid is an Azrieli Prize Laureate in Jewish Music, a Laureate of the Landau Prize for Performing Arts, and a Sidney Myer Creative Fellow.

Yitzhak Yedid has been hailed as one of the most original composers on the international music scene today.

Yitzhak Yedid's work is a reflection of his deep interest in Middle Eastern culture, ancient rituals, the aesthetics of classical and liturgical Arabic music, and non-Western music performance practices.

Yitzhak Yedid specializes in performing Judaeo-Sephardic and Middle Eastern sacred music in concert piano recitals.

Yitzhak Yedid was born in Jerusalem to a Jewish family of Syrian and Iraqi descent.

Yitzhak Yedid studied at the Rubin Academy of Music with Vyacheslav Ganelin and the New England Conservatory in Boston with Ran Blake and Paul Bley in 1997 and 1998.

In 1999 Yitzhak Yedid released his first album Full Moon Fantasyfor the Musa label.

In 2001, Yitzhak Yedid's second recording, Inner Outcry, was released, for Musa.

Yitzhak Yedid was commissioned to compose the suite Tachanun for a festival in Vienna, Austria, in 2002.

However, Yitzhak Yedid refuses to publish the hand-written scores of these works.

In 2005, Yitzhak Yedid composed the Oud Bass Piano Trio, performed at the Sibiu Festival in Romania, as well as in Australia, Canada, and the US in May and September 2005.

In 2006, Yitzhak Yedid composed Since My Soul Loved, a four movement composition for improvising players for violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano.

Yitzhak Yedid has put out over ten albums as a solo act and has collaborated Ethiopian-born saxophonist and vocalist Abate Berihun as the Ras-Deshen ensemble.

Some of Yitzhak Yedid's works have been described as Third Stream, which combines contemporary classical music with jazz improvisation.

Much of Yitzhak Yedid's output includes slots where soloists can improvise.

Yitzhak Yedid has often said he is delighted when performers surprise him with their inventiveness.

Yitzhak Yedid's compositions are generally viscerally and cerebrally engaging, and often visually striking, with the piano- playing role requiring a certain amount of calisthenic activity and a significant dosage of emotional and technical investment.

Musically, Yitzhak Yedid creates a confluence between the Maqamat, heterophonic textures of ancient genres, and compositional approaches of contemporary Western classical music, to produce an original sound.

Yitzhak Yedid introduces microtonality in his works in a range of different ways.

Yitzhak Yedid examined ways of using microtonal pitches that in Arabic music function as ornamentation and as part of improvisational gestures.

Yitzhak Yedid has extended the use of traditional ornamentation to compose microtonal sounds with microtonal qualities that unfold at different tempi without a definite pitch.

Yitzhak Yedid writes "This work expresses my endless sadness to the death of innocent people".

Yitzhak Yedid is the recipient of the Azrieli Foundation Prize for Jewish Music.

Yitzhak Yedid's winning composition, Kiddushim Ve' Killulim, was unanimously declared the best new major work of Jewish music by the judges of the Canadian prize.

Yitzhak Yedid received a total prize package valued at over, which included a world premiere performance of his work by Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and a recording released on the Analekta label.

In 2018 Yitzhak Yedid was awarded the Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship, valued over a two-year period.

Yitzhak Yedid has received the top two prizes in Israel for composers and performers: the Prime Minister's Prize for Composers in 2007 and the Landau Prize for Performing Arts in 2009.

Yitzhak Yedid has been awarded a composer-in- residence position at the Judith Wright Arts Centre, at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and at the Gallop House in WA.