Edwin Seroussi - Biography#
Edwin Seroussi was born 1952 in Montevideo. He studied violin with Miguel Szilagy (1961 - 1970) and music theory and composition with Héctor Tosar Errecart (1968 - 1970). In 1971 he emigrated to Israel and studied musicology at the Department of Musicology at the Hebrew University (BA 1974; MA 1981, with Amnon Shiloah) and composition with André Hajdu (1977 - 1980). This was followed by a doctoral degree in ethnomusicology at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) (doctorate 1987, with Ali Jihad Racy [* 1943]). Before Seroussi moved to the Hebrew University, he taught at the Department of Music at Bar Ilan University (1987-2000). He was visiting professor and research fellow at UCLA (1999), at Wesleyan University (2007), at the Institute for Musicology Zurich (2008, 2013), at the University of California in Berkeley (2010), at Boston University (2011), at Harvard University (2013), the University of Chicago (2016) and the University of Pennsylvania (2019). Since 2000 he has been Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Director of the Jewish Music Research Center (JMRC). Since 2009 Seroussi is visiting scholar at Dartmouth College.
He teaches ethnomusicology, theory and methodology of the study of oral traditions, music in Jewish societies, music from Islamic countries and popular music. At the JMRC he founded theYuval Music Series and was resonsible for the CD series Anthology of Music Traditions in Israel. In addition to his academic work, he held many public offices in Israel, e.g. member of the Public Board of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (1995 - 1999) and President of the Israel Musicological Society (2002 - 2005). His research focuses on the musical cultures of the Mediterranean parts of Europae and the Middle East, the interactions between Jewish and Islamic cultures, Jewish and Israeli music and the processes of hybridization, diaspora, nationalism and transnationalism. Seroussi has received prestigious awards, most important the Israel Prize in 2018.
