Honoring the Life and Music of Yehuda Yannay

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Photo Via Yehuda Yannay - yehudayannay.com

Yehuda Yannay

Yehuda Yannay was a composer, conductor, performer and multimedia artist. He joined UWM’s music department in 1970 and retired, in name only, in 2004. He then dedicated his energies full time to composition and performance as he continued to receive commissions from musical groups throughout the world.  

A celebratory program of his life presented by Chamber Music Milwaukee will begin with a 10-minute film, Dan Boville’s "Yehuda Composed.” “I think it does a wonderful job presenting the life, love, musical exploration and adventures that Yehuda took in his life and brought to ours,” says Jon Welstead, director of UWM’s Electro-Acoustic Music Center. He and Yannay became good friends. He shares his memories: 

Welstead was recruited by UWM in 1981 to replace Yannay’s composition/theory duties during his 1982 sabbatical in Germany. “This was also the year Yehuda asked me to electronically orchestrate and record his movie score for Jydll just completed by [UWM film professor] Dick Blau. Thus began my long journey working with Yehuda. For the next 30 years, we collaborated, team-taught, presented and performed new music-art-theatre throughout the country via his Music from Almost Yesterday concert organization.”  

Together with Steve Nelson-Raney they released a CD, The Ghost in the Machine, in 1997.  

Yannay was born in Romania before World War II. He and his family miraculously survived the Holocaust but with increasing antisemitism the family moved to Israel in 1951. He studied composition privately with Alexander Uriah Boskovich and graduated from Tel Aviv’s Rubin Academy of Music in 1964. A Fulbright Fellowship enabled him to pursue postgraduate degrees in music in the United States, earning an MFA at Brandeis University in 1966 and a DMA from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign in 1974. Besides teaching at UWM he was a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. He was also a Fulbright professor at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg.  

At the Yannay celebratin, Bernard Zinck, associate professor of violin and chamber music director at UWM, will be the soloist in “The Exquisite Viola” (transcription for solo violin), joined by Stephanie Jacob on piano and Ravenna Helson on cello for the “Piano Trio.” 

“The Exquisite Viola will be a premiere as Yehuda transcribed it for me from solo viola to solo violin,” Zinck says. “He did it about three years ago and wanted to hear it. With Covid, performances were in a halt and after, I just did not have time to learn the piece which is, as most of Yehuda’s music, complicated. It just seemed fitting to tackle the piece for this concert and spend many hours conversing with him through his music.”  

Beginning in 2000, Yannay began composing in collaboration with the bayan/accordion virtuoso Stas Venglevski. It was an extremely productive relationship, expanding both the repertory and use of the bayan. Two pieces are on the program: Tandem Pieces and Incipit Vita Nova.  

“Thirty years of collaboration with Yehuda Yannay have been the most productive of my career,” Venglevski says. “Yehuda wrote about 20 compositions for the bayan. He introduced me to many wonderful composers and musicians and also to the world of new music. I was lucky enough to perform many concerts and many premieres under his leadership. An unforgettable joint visit to Paris in 2012 for the world premiere of his 26-minute work in four movements “Plus Aves Moins” (More from Less) for bayan and 24 flutes.”  

Theater of the Absurd 

Never one to be confined in a narrow box, Yannay became aware of the Theater of the Absurd in the late 1950s (Eugène Ionesco was also Romanian) and entered into theatrical-performance works and collaborative filmmaking, acting in such films as Jidyll (1990) and Houdini's Ninth (1973). Other works followed such as Radiant, Inner Light (1998–2000); Insomnia in Havana, a theater piece for a percussionist/actor, live electronics and projections (2005); and Midwest Mythologist (2012).  

Filmmaker Dick Blaushared one memory of Yehuda: 

Early 80’s. YY is back from a Fulbright in Germany. Coffee. 

YY: Hey, you wanna make a film? Every scene to have the color yellow or the Star of David. 

Me: Audacious! We’ll get Jake Fuller to shoot it.

Three years later. 

JIDYLL: The Wandering Jew shows up in Milwaukee and wanders through Western History, imagining himself as everyone from Jesus to Freud, Herzl, Dreyfuss, and (the arch enemy) Wagner.   

Thirty scenes, thirty characters, all played by…YY, of course.

In summary. “Brilliant, playful, funny, brave, and o so talented. That was my dear friend, Yehuda Yannay.”  

Cinematographer Jake Fuller recalls that Jidyll “spawned a long friendship that involved long walks during which we exchanged books, health talk, but not too much, and general philosophy of life.”  

After a brief illness, Yannay passed away at the age of 86 in Milwaukee in December 2023. He will be missed by many worldwide. He was a polyglot and well-read in several languages. Our “quick cup” of coffee often lasted for hours and more often than not, a half a cup of cold coffee was on the table when we finally got up to leave. I’m sure there are many who will also say with me, “Yehuda was my good friend, and I miss him!” 

This celebratory concert will also include Yannay’s Hidden Melodies for horn and cello with Greg Flint on horn and Ravenna Helson on cello. Jon Welstead, Marie Mellott and Jill Sebastian will also speak between Yehuda’s compositions. 

This is a hybrid event. More information can be found at Chamber Music Milwaukee – A Celebration of Yehuda Yannay.

“A Celebration of Yehuda Yannay,” 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 15 at UWM’s Fine Arts Recital Hall.