Yuval Ron

Composition career

Yuval Ron began composing professionally for theater and contemporary dance in Israel in the early 1980s. In the late 80s-early 90s, he worked as a composer for promotional videos, theater, television, and dance in Boston and New York. He scored his first feature film, “Urban Jungle,” produced in New York, in 1990. In the mid-late 90s, Yuval Ron was a composer for the Fox Kids network in Los Angeles, CA. In 2006, he composed music for the short film “West Bank Story,” a musical spoof of “West Side Story” that features two rival gangs of fast food employees – the Israeli “Kosher King” vs. the Palestinian “Hummus Hut”. “West Bank Story” won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2007. Other notable scores include scores for PBS Nova (“Breaking the Maya Code”), Proteus, Oliver Twist, and Golda’s Balcony.

In addition to film music, Yuval Ron has also received commissions from various international choreographers, including Daniel Ezralow (American Repertory Ballet), Ashley Roland (ISO dance company), Oguri (Renzoku Dance Company) and Zen priest and visual artist Hirokazu Kosaka. Yuval Ron has composed innovative musical scores to site-specific experimental installations commissioned by the Getty Center, Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Samsung, Japan-America Center in Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in NYC.

Yuval Ron also composed music for theater productions, including Shakespeare's The Tempest, Yeats' Amir's Jealousy, and Beckett's Cascando. Other recent notable work includes “6 Healing Sounds,” a 6-album commission of ambient, “sound-healing” music based on traditional Chinese healing concepts, for Metta Mindfulness Music.

Performance career

As a performer, Yuval Ron is best known as an oud player and ensemble leader. He also plays the guitar, the Turkish cumbus, saz, and the Moroccan sintir. Yuval Ron founded the Yuval Ron Ensemble in 1999. The group has toured extensively in the US, as well as internationally in Israel, Turkey, Morocco, and Korea. In 2008, the Yuval Ron Ensemble was the featured group in the Gala Concert for the Dalai Lama's initiative Seeds of Compassion in the Seattle Opera Hall. See: Yuval Ron Ensemble.

In 2010, Yuval Ron was a featured presenter at TEDx Conejo, CA, where he narrated a mystical story and accompanied himself with the oud.

Lecture and Teaching Career

Yuval Ron has given many lectures about sacred Middle Eastern music and the spiritual foundations of creativity at American universities including Yale, UCLA, Johns Hopkins University, MIT, Middlebury College, Brandeis University, Berklee College of Music, University of Chicago, and Pittsburgh University. Since 2009, Yuval Ron has been on the faculty of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA, where he lectures and leads workshops on sacred Middle Eastern music and dance, spirituality and the brain, and related topics. He is also an affiliated artist with the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, and a "Guiding Voice" for Seven Pillars - House of Wisdom.

Writing Career

At the behest of friends and fans, Yuval Ron wrote a book entitled "Divine Attunement: Music as a Path to Wisdom." Divine Attunement was published in August 2014 by The Oracle Institute. The book explores the lives of mystical musical figures from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist traditions. These stories are supplemented by sound meditation exercises for readers who wish to participate in these practices, as well as neuroscience explanations for the phenomena described in the book. The book features a forward by Sufi leader, Pir Zia Inayat Khan.

Awards and Honors

Discography