Jacob Gilboa

Jacob Gilboa was born in Koice (now Slovakia) in 1920. When he was three years old, the family moved to Vienna (Austria), where he received his first piano lessons. After the annexation of Austria by Germany (1938), he arrived alone

to Eretz Israel. He began studying architecture at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa,

but at 23 years of age decided to switch to the field of music. Gilboa started out as an autodidact and later changed to regular studies of music at the Academy of Music in Jerusalem (1944), where his teachers of composition were Josef Tal and Paul Ben-Haim. His early compositions were at first influenced by a style that was then called “Mediterranean.” By the end of the 1950s a change in serious music occurred all over Europe, with new perceptions replacing the methods customary until then. In 1963, Gilboa decided to go to Cologne in Germany and partake in a course of contemporary music, directed by the composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Henri Pousseur. This get-together brought about a transformation in Gilboa’s style. From then on his goal was to unite in his style new means of expression of the West with what was customary in the East. Gilboa was awarded many prizes, among them the Prime Minister’s Award (1983), the Liberson Award (1984), the ACUM Award (four times), the Engel Award (twice) and the ACUM “Gold Feather” for his life work (1999). Jacob Gilboa died on May 9, 2007.