Tsippi Fleischer

Tsippi Fleischer is one of Israsel’s major composers. Her oeuvre encompasses four decades of creative activity in all the major genres, reflecting the many varied trends in contemporary musical and theatrical artistic dynamics in Israel and throughout the world. Her works appeared on CDs produced by international labels and by the Israel Music Institute, and achieved international recognition. 

Fleischer was born in Haifa in 1946. The city’s Arab-Jewish environment left an indelible mark on her compositions. She began her formal studies in piano and music theory at the Rubin Conservatory in Haifa, and graduated from the Oriental studies stream at Haifa’s Reali School. She later pursued academic studies in music, Oriental studies and linguistics. Her prominent mentors in the field of music in Israel included Yitzhak Sadai, Noam Sheriff and Mendi Rodan.

Fleischer’s style has diversified greatly during her creative life. The early beginnings in the 1970s are typified by a search for a compositional style in which to incorporate her Oriental studies. The 1980s brought the formation and crystallization of this style, marked by a finely-honed tonality and images of the Israeli landscape. By the late 1980s her work reached new heights with musical settings of literary Arabic texts, most prominently in her cantata Like Two Branches. In the 1990s, her vision deepened and expanded historically and geographically, incorporating elements from the Semitic world and beyond, including references to ancient cultures. The early decades of the 21st century are marked by the composer’s entry into the large-scale genres of symphony and opera, allowing her to expand her artistic vision. 

Fleischer is also notable for her active contribution to the ideology of music education in Israel, a contribution which finds its expression both in her educational work and in her many publications on music education and on Hebrew song. 

Today, Fleischer continues her intensive activity – both as a composer, reaching new heights with the recent completion of her grand opera Adapa, and in summarizing her life’s work in the study of Hebrew song. Recently, she published an online educational kit based on her children’s opera Oasis.