Yehuda Yannay

Yehuda Yannay (born May 26, 1937) is a composer. He was born in Timișoara, Romania, and emigrated to Israel in 1951. In Israel, he studied at the Rubin Academy, Tel Aviv. He subsequently studied at Brandeis University, the Tanglewood Music Center and the University of Illinois, before becoming a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UW–M). He is now an emeritus professor of music at UW–M. Biography Yannay was born to Hungarian-speaking Jewish parents on 26 May 1937 in Timișoara, in the Banat region of Romania. Against all odds he and his immediate family in Timișoara and Budapest survived the Holocaust era. Yannay studied piano as a child but had no particular interest in music. His childhood interests were in natural sciences. In 1948 the Romanian Communist regime expropriated his parents' house and small paper-goods factory. The family was allowed to immigrate to Israel in 1951 and had to renounce Romanian citizenship. In Israel he attended the elite agricultural high school at Pardes Hanna Agricultural High School with a full scholarship and served after graduation in the Military Police Corps of the Israel Defense Forces as a criminal investigator. After years of hiatus, he resumed sporadic piano lessons and started to compose small piano pieces, albeit without any formal composition study.