Professor Emeritus Yehuda Yannay

Yehuda Yannay (1937- 2023) was born in Romania and emigrated with his family to Israel in 1951. He graduated from the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv in 1964. In 1966 he completed a Master of Fine Arts at Brandeis University in composition and electronic music. He was invited to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in 1968 where he obtained a doctorate in 1974. In 1970 he was appointed to the theory and composition faculty at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee where he served as Professor of Music until 2005.

Yehuda became a beloved member of the UWM Music faculty and throughout his career, he achieved international recognition for his innovative compositions. In the 1980s he served as Fulbright guest-professor at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik in Stuttgart and Hamburg. He was guest composer in the new music festivals in Sao Paulo in 1989 and Stuttgart in 1990, and the International Week of New Music in Bucharest in 1992 and 1993. The International Music Festival in Timisoara, the city of his birth, honored him with a concert of his music. In 1998 he was invited as guest composer and presented by the Society for Jewish Music of Berlin for the festival celebrating 50th anniversary of the State of Israel.