Alotin Yardena

Composer and pianist Yardena Alotin (1930-1994) was born in Tel Aviv and at the age of five began to study piano with Rivka Sharett-Hoz sister of Moshe Sharett and wife of Dov Hoz. She studied from 1948 to 1950 at the Music Teachers' College in Tel Aviv and then from 1950 to 1952 at the Israel Music Academy. Among her teachers were Alexander Uriah Boskovich (theory), Mordecai Seter (harmony, counterpoint), Paul Ben-Haim (orchestration), Ilona Vincze-Kraus (piano) and Ödön Pártos (composition).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    In her writing, she made use of both eastern and western traditions as well as Jewish folklore alongside modern ideas. Her first work was Yefei Nof for mixed choir, which won the Nissimov Prize and was premiered by the Rinat Choir in Tel Aviv and at the Paris International Festival in 1956. She has produced both didactic and commissioned work, and rewrote Yefei Nof for solo flute (1978) for James Galway. In 1984 she received a commission from the Tel Aviv Foundation of Literature and the Arts to mark Tel Aviv's seventy-fifth anniversary. In 1975 and 1976, Alotin was the composer-in-residence at Bar-Ilan University. In 1998 Alotin's husband donated a fund in her name for the support of Israeli music performance.