About
Udi Perlman (b. 1990) is an Israeli composer of contemporary classical music based in Berlin.
Haaretz has described him as one of his country’s “most promising contemporary composers,” praising his “inventiveness and sweeping momentum,” “grand and rich orchestration that retains vitality and clarity,” and the “captivating, surprising, rich, and colorful” quality of his work. The Millbrook Independent wrote of his piano trio Nostos, “That melody has been ringing in my ears over the past twenty-four hours; it provided a delightful conclusion, and I wished to hear the work once more!” Perlman’s music weaves contemporary classical language with the resonance of his Jewish-Israeli heritage. It unfolds through vibrant harmonies and kaleidoscopic textures, revealing hidden beauty in simple gestures through imaginative recontextualization and evocative juxtapositions. Rooted in a love of the Western classical canon, he reimagines its forms and idioms through a distinct cultural lens.
Perlman’s music has been commissioned and performed by the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Symphonieorchester der Universität der Künste Berlin, Yale Philharmonia, Ensemble Modern Academy, Meitar Ensemble, Israel Contemporary Players, Tacet(i), Tremolo Ensemble, MultiPiano, Lysander Piano Trio, Yale Glee Club, and The Israeli Vocal Ensemble, among others. He is the recipient of a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Pogorzelski-Yankee Award from the American Guild of Organists, the Rena Greenwald Memorial Prize from Yale School of Music, the Israeli Prime Minister's Composer Award, and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation's Aviv Competitions Composition Prize. An artist fellow at MacDowell, I-Park Foundation, and Herrenhaus Edenkoben, he has also held fellowships at the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, and Meitar Ensemble's Tedarim Project. He is currently a fellow at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music.
Passionate about music education, Perlman has taught in higher education, pre–college, and outreach programs in Germany, the U.S., and Israel. He serves on the music theory faculty at the Jerusalem Music Center and directs the Jerusalem Street Orchestra Mentorship Program, which trains early-career composers in orchestration and arranging. At the Berlin School of Popular Arts (SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences), he teaches his self-designed course, Arranging Popular Music for Strings. Previously, he served as a Teaching Fellow at Yale University—teaching composition, analysis, musicianship, and electronic music—and taught composition to high school students through Yale’s Music in Schools Initiative.
Recent and upcoming projects include Alphabet Cantata, a new work for Ensemble Arava (Germany); a new work for Asambura Ensemble (Germany); and a new work for violinist Hyeyung Sol Yoon and harpist Jennifer Ellis as part of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music (USA).
Perlman is currently pursuing a DMA in composition at the Yale School of Music, where his doctoral thesis won the Friedmann Thesis Prize. He holds degrees from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (B.Mus. & M.Mus.), the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin (Artist Diploma), and undertook additional studies at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe. His teachers include Christopher Theofanidis, Aaron Jay Kernis, David Lang, Martin Bresnick, Jörg Widmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Yinam Leef, and Menachem Wiesenberg.