Born in 1990 in Tel Aviv, Udi Perlman is an award-winning composer whose music showcases a distinctive fusion of influences from his upbringing in Israel with contemporary classical music sensibilities. With a penchant for crafting captivating musical narratives and unexpected formal twists, Perlman's work has been hailed as 'fascinating, surprising, rich, and colorful' (Haaretz). With a vibrant harmonic palette and kaleidoscopic instrumental textures, his genre-bending compositions often playfully transform and recontextualize simple, ordinary musical gestures, revealing hidden beauty and evoking emotional expressiveness.

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Perlman's orchestral, chamber, and vocal works have received recognition and commissions from institutions and ensembles such as the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, European Capital of Culture Festival, American Guild of Organists, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Yale Philharmonia, Philharmonie der Nationen, Israel Sinfonietta Beer Sheva, The Yale Glee Club, Ensemble Modern Academy, Meitar Ensemble, Israel Contemporary Players, Jerusalem Street Orchestra, Arab-Jewish Youth Orchestra, the Israeli Flute Choir, Tacet(i) Ensemble, Tremolo Ensemble, MultiPiano Ensemble, Omer String Quartet, and the Lysander Piano Trio. His works have been performed in Israel, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Austria, Britain, and the United States.

 

Perlman has been honored with various accolades, including the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Ronald G. Pogorzelski and Lester D. Yankee Award from the American Guild of Organists, the Israeli Prime Minister's Composer Award, the Rena Greenwald Memorial Prize from the Yale School of Music, the François Schapira Prize for Composition from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, and the 1st Prize at the Israel Conservatory's National Composition Competition. Additionally, Perlman has received scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, the Israeli Composers League, the Siday Fellowship for Musical Creativity, and the Baden-Württemberg-Stipendium. He was composer-in-residence at MacDowell, I-Park Foundation, and Herrenhaus Edenkoben, and also held fellowships at the Aspen Music Festival and School, Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, and Meitar Ensemble's Tedarim Project for Contemporary Music. In 2021, Perlman was recognized by the Haaretz newspaper as one of the nine 'most promising Israeli contemporary composers'.

 

Currently, Perlman is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition at the Yale School of Music, where his doctoral thesis won the 2022 Friedmann Thesis Prize. He holds degrees from the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin (Artist Diploma) and the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (B. Mus. & M.Mus.). His mentors include Christopher Theofanidis, Aaron Jay Kernis, David Lang, Martin Bresnick, Jörg Widmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Yinam Leef, and Menachem Wiesenberg. He resides with his wife in Berlin.