Composer — Berlin

I write so when we meet, we are not strangers.

Before I started making music, I struggled — often failing — to connect with people whom I liked and loved. Learning new musical languages lets me connect with strangers and make them feel something.

  • Hebrew Magnificat, for choir and orchestra
  • Concerto for oud and violin
  • Jazz-fusion ensemble
  • Orchestral piece for hostages
  • String re-composition of a Martin Garrix track, in Dolby Atmos
  • Solo recital of my own piano pieces

Moscow · Jerusalem · Tel Aviv · Berkeley · Paris · Berlin

Who

I've never been at home in one place, or in one kind of music.

Metal and classical Arabic music. Schnittke and avant-garde rock. The Prodigy and Björk's string albums. Brad Mehldau and Sviatoslav Richter. Orchestras, jazz players, pop producers. I was post-modern in my identity before I ever knew what it meant.

It is a way of living that doesn't fit neatly into categories. Without a single place to call my own, I move between genres and scenes. Each work has to make its own way to its audience; there is no shortcut.

What holds the work together is not a style, but a question I keep asking: what is my voice needed for, and for whom, right now?

— Aviya Kopelman

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Selected work

Featured music

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Latest

News

Forty Something — Present Music opens its 45th season, Milwaukee

Present Music opens its 45th season on 30 October with forty something! — a concert and party named after my jazz-fusion piece, Forty Something, on a program with Donnacha Dennehy's Limina, music by Nico Muhly, and a world premiere by Alex Temple. Deanna Tham conducts, with pianist Michael Mizrahi.

7:30 PM at the Bader Concert Hall, UWM Zelazo Center, Milwaukee.

Details and tickets.

I vs AI — lecture at the Berlin Transatlantic Composers Workshop

Returning as guest faculty to the Berlin Transatlantic Composers Workshop, held from 29 June to 5 July, with a lecture titled I vs AI on the composer's place in the age of artificial intelligence.

The workshop again closes with premieres by the participating composers, performed by the BAAM Ensemble under Garrett Keast.

Getting Closer performed at Connecticut College

Getting Closer, for oboe and electric guitar, performed by Libby Van Cleve and Trevor Babb at the Connecticut College Music Department's Spring Faculty Showcase.

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Scores & parts

Perform Aviya's music

Digital scores are available for purchase, and orchestral and ensemble parts can be rented directly from the composer — for performers, ensembles, festivals and institutions.

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Kopelman's very appealing piece was played between the two Viennese giants…

Camilla Lundberg · Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm