Yotam Haber

His music hailed by New Yorker critic Alex Ross as “deeply haunting,” Yotam Haber was born in Holland and grew up in Israel, Nigeria, and the American Midwest. He is a recipient of a 2022 commission from Chamber Music America, the winner of the 2022 Third Annual Henri Lazarof International Commission Prize, the winner of the 2021 Benjamin Hadley Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2020 Azrieli Music Prize, a 2017 Koussevitzky Commission for the Library of Congress, a 2013 Fromm Music Foundation commission, a 2013 NYFA award, the 2008 Rome Prize and a 2005 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

After an undergraduate degree in composition from Indiana University, he completed a DMA at Cornell, as well as completing the year-long course on live electronics with Alvise Vidolin and Adriano Guarnieri at the Milan Conservatory.

He has received grants and fellowships from Civitella Ranieri, the MAP Fund, New Music USA, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, Yaddo, Bogliasco, MacDowell, the Hermitage, ASCAP, the Copland House, Aspen Music Festival and Tanglewood.

In 2015, Haber’s first monographic album of chamber music, Torus (Naxos), was hailed by New York’s WQXR as “a snapshot of a soul in flux – moving from life to the afterlife, from Israel to New Orleans – a composer looking for a sound and finding something powerful along the way.” His second album featuring Talea Ensemble, Bloodsnow, was released on Sideband Records in fall of 2023.

Recent commissions include a percussion concerto for SANDBOX Percussion (for 2026), Commotio Cordis for PRISM Quartet and David Krakauer, works for Talea Ensemble, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Argento New Music Project, Kronos Quartet and Carnegie Hall, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor; an evening-length oratorio for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, CalARTS@REDCAT/Disney Hall (Los Angeles); New York-based Contemporaneous, Gabriel Kahane, and Alarm Will Sound; the 2015 New York Philharmonic CONTACT! Series; the Venice Biennale (2012 & 2014); Bang on a Can Summer Festival; Neuvocalsolisten Stuttgart and ensemble l’arsenale; FLUX Quartet, JACK Quartet, Cantori New York, the Tel Aviv-based Meitar Ensemble, the Israeli Chamber Players, and the Berlin-based Quartet New Generation. Recent major projects include New Water Music, an interactive work (2017) for the Louisiana Philharmonic and community musicians performed from boats and barges along the waterways of New Orleans; They Say You Are My Disaster (Koussevitzky Commission for the Library of Congress, 2019) for voice and ensemble premiered by Argento Ensemble in 2021; and Estro Poetico-armonico III (2020) for mezzo-soprano, electronics, and sinfonietta for Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne.

Before joining the BU faculty in 2025, Haber served as Associate Professor of Composition at UMKC Conservatory where he also co-directed and founded a music education program at Lansing Correctional Facility. He was a 2023-2024 Fulbright Distinguished Senior at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. He is Artistic Director Emeritus of MATA, the non-profit organization founded by Philip Glass that has, since 1996, been dedicated to commissioning and presenting new works by young composers from around the world. His music is published by RAI Trade.

Selected Awards and Recognition:

2023-2024 Fulbright Distinguished Senior at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance
2021 Benjamin Danks Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
2020 Azrieli Prize
2015 DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Grant
2015 ATLAS Grant ($50k award to Louisiana Artists and Scholars from the Board of Regents)
2007-2008 Frederic A. Juilliard | Walter Damrosch Rome Prize
2005-2006 2005-06 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow

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