Yotam Haber is a Kansas City-based composer whose work explores themes of migration and memory. New Yorker critic Alex Ross has described his music as “deeply haunting.” He was named one of the Los Angeles Times’ "2014 Faces to Watch" and selected for Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s “30 Composers Under 40.” Born in the Netherlands, Haber grew up in Israel and West Africa.
His many accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, a Fulbright Distinguished Senior Fellowship, the Azrieli Prize, and honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received grants and commissions from Chamber Music America, the Fromm Foundation, Aspen, Tanglewood, New Music USA, the Jerome and Rockefeller foundations, ASCAP, Copland House, and others.
Haber’s recent commissions include works for Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, CalARTS@REDCAT/Disney Hall, Contemporaneous, Gabriel Kahane, Either/Or, Alarm Will Sound, the New York Philharmonic’s Contact! series, the Venice Biennale, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, FLUX Quartet, JACK Quartet, Cantori New York, Meitar Ensemble, and Quartet New Generation.
He is currently working on Voice Imitator, a cycle of piano works with MacArthur Fellow Anna Schuleit Haber, and XVIOLENCES, a micro-opera with librettist Royce Vavrek. Haber is artistic director emeritus of MATA, the nonprofit founded by Philip Glass to support young composers worldwide. His music is published by RAI Trade.
Throughout his MacDowell residencies, Haber has completed two chamber music commissions for Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, to be premiered at the commemoration of Zumthor’s new chapel in Vals; worked on the soundtrack for the documentary Oro Macht Frei; worked on a Meet the Composer commission for The Knights and a film score for Jonah Bleicher; completed a commission for the Southern Poverty Law Center and a new work for Alarm Will Sound; worked on The Voice Imitator, a series of 104 works for prepared and unprepared piano corresponding to 104 paintings by collaborator Anna Schuleit Haber, based on the collection of short stories by Thomas Bernhard (this project received a NYFA award in 2013); completed New Water Music, a commission from the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, which premiered in 2017 with the LPO and hundreds of community musicians; and during his 2025 residency, Haber worked on composing a chamber opera with librettist Royce Vavrek.
