Yehuda Yannay

Yehuda Yannay (b. 26 May 1937, Romania) is an American-Israeli composer, conductor, film maker and performance artist.

Yannay moved from Romania to Israel in 1951, where he studied with Alexander Uriya Boskovitch (Levy 2001), who influenced him greatly. After completing his studies at the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv, he pursued postgraduate studies in America, enabled by a Fulbright Fellowship. At Brandeis University (MFA 1966), he studied with Arthur Berger and Ernst Krenek, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (DMA 1974) he studied with Salvatore Martirano, among others (Levy 2001). In 1968 he settled permanently in the USA.

Yehuda Yannay retired in 2004 from his position of Professor of Composition at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. There, he was founder of the Music From Almost Yesterday concert series at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, now celebrating 39 years of new music performances.

A winner of international and national composition awards, Yannay served as guest-professor at the Staatliche Hochschulen für Musik in Stuttgart and Hamburg. Yannay is a prolific and versatile composer, conductor, film maker, and performance artist whose list of more than a 120 works include music for orchestra, electronic, live electronic and synthesizer pieces, environmental compositions, film, music-theater, and a large body of vocal and chamber music pieces. Considered an international figure in contemporary music, his contributions to new ideas in 20th century music are listed in articles, textbooks and encyclopedias of music (Cope 1976; Levy 2001; Randel 1978; Schwarts and Godfrey 1992; Slonimsky 1978; Vinton 1974).

References

• Blatter, Alfred. 1980. Instrumentation/Orchestration. New York: Longman, Inc.
• Cope, David. 1976. New Directions in Music, second edition. Dubuque: W. C. Brown Co. ISBN 0697035565 (And subsequent editions: 3rd ed. 1981 ISBN 0697034488; 4th ed. 1984 ISBN 0697036073; 5th ed. 1989 ISBN 0697033422; 6th ed. Madison, Wis.: Brown & Benchmark, 1993 ISBN 0697124959 [reprint 1998, new ISBN 088133992X]; 7th ed., Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 2001 ISBN 1577661087)
• Kramer, Jonathan D. 1988. The Time of Music. New York: Schirmer Books.
• Levy, Burt J. 2001. "Yannay, Yehuda". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
• Lyman, Darryl. 1986. Great Jews in Music. Middle Village, NY: J. D. Publishers.
• Randel, Don M. 1978. Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music. Boston: Belknap Press. ISBN 0674374711 (cloth) 0674374703 (pbk.) (And subsequent editions)
• Read, Gardner. 1976. Contemporary Instrumental Techniques New York: Schirmer Books.
• Schwartz, Elliott, and Daniel Godfrey. 1992. Music Since 1945: Issues, Materials, and Literature. New York: Schirmer Books; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada; New York: Maxwell Macmillan International. ISBN 0028730402
• Slonimsky, Nicolas (ed.). 1978. Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 6th edition. New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0028702409 (And subsequent editions)
• Vinton, John (ed.). 1974. Dictionary of Contemporary Music. New York: Dutton & Co. ISBN 0525091254
• Yannay, Yehuda. 1988. "A European Trilogy". Perspectives of New Music 26, no. 2 (Summer): 281–99.
• Rubin, Emanuel, and Baron, John H. 2006. "Music in Jewish History and Culture". Sterling Heights, Michigan: Harmonie Park Press. ISBN 0-89990-133-6