Edwin Seroussi

Edwin Seroussi (born 26 December 1952 in Montevideo) is an Israeli musicologist of Uruguayan origin. He is the Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology, Director of the Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Visiting Scholar in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College.[1] He is the 2018 Israel Prize laureate in the field of Musicology.[2]

Edwin Seroussi

Edwin Seroussi was born in Montevideo, Uruguay.[3] He immigrated to Israel in 1971 to study at the Department of Musicology of the Hebrew University at the undergraduate and graduate levels continuing into his doctoral studies at the Department of Music (today the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music of the University of California Los Angeles (1981-1987). Upon graduation he taught at Bar-Ilan University (1988-2000), transferring in 2000 to the Hebrew University. [4]

He founded and edits Yuval Music Series and is editor of the CD series Anthology of Music Traditions in Israel of the Jewish Music Research Centre.[5]

Seroussi's earliest publications explored diverse aspects of the history and consolidation of Sephardic liturgical music (see for example: Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue Music in Reform Sources from Hamburg, Jerusalem, 1996). He also edited the Cancionero sefardi (1995) by Alberto Hemsi, one of the largest field collections of Sephardic songs from the pre-World War II period. Later on he turned his attention to popular music in Israel. Results of this research appear in the book that he co-authored with sociologist of culture Motti Regev, Popular Music and National Culture in Israel.[6]