Amos Elkana

Amos Elkana was born in Boston, but grew up in Jerusalem. At the age of 15, he picked up the electric guitar and began to study music, which soon became his primary occupation in life. In 1987, aged 20, he returned to Boston to study jazz guitar at the Berklee College of Music and composition at The New England Conservatory of Music. In 1990, he moved to Paris where he studied composition with Michele Reverdy. He also took composition classes with Erik Norby in Copenhagen, and with Paul-Heinz Dittrich and Edison Denisov in Berlin. Two years later he returned to Israel where he has been living since. In 2007 Elkana received his M.F.A. in music/sound from Bard College, New York. While at Bard, he focused on electronic music and took lessons with Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman, Richard Teitelbaum, George Lewis, Maryanne Amacher and Larry Polansky, among others.

Elkana composes concert music for orchestras, ensembles and individual performers as well as music for dance, theatre and films. His works have been performed and recorded by ensembles and musicians from all over the world.

Elkana is also an active performer. He regularly participates in concerts and performances of improvised music where he plays electric guitar and does real-time audio processing using his computer.

During his career Elkana received several important prizes for his compositions. Among them are the ACUM Golden Feather Award (2002), The Rozenblum Prize for Excellent artists (2012) and the 2011 Prime Minister Prize for Music Composition. This prize is the highest award of its kind for composers in Israel. In their decision the jury noted that Elkana is the author of “very original music, independent of the prevailing fashion, guided by unique and delicate taste,” and radiates “a strong sense of honesty.”

In its review of Arabic Lessons, the nglish daily Jerusalem Post called it “a perplexing, beguiling 40-minute opus in which the composer challenges the so-called ‘acceptable’ form of the lieder, shattering it and building it anew, as if constructing a new world from its ashes. … Arabic Lessons is one of the most significant works composed in Israel for quite a while.”

After the premiere of Casino Umbro the review said, “The wonderful Casino Umbro summed up and cast its shadow on the ones that came before it. This one had it all: spicy changing rhythms, hints of French baroque in the beginning and ending, clear structure, quasi American mechanistic minimalism that somehow gained energy and in no way felt monotonous and on the other hand transitions into a softer sound up to a full of vibrato violin solo, totally romantic, shameless and beautiful. And all this logical, one thing leads to the next and closing exactly at the right moment.”