Udi Perlman, the 2027 Luciano Berio Rome Prize Fellow in Musical Composition at the American Academy in Rome, is a Tel Aviv-born composer based in Berlin. His orchestral, chamber, and vocal works have been commissioned and performed widely across the United States, Europe, and Israel by ensembles including Yale Philharmonia, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Symphonieorchester der Universität der Künste Berlin, Ensemble Modern Academy, Lysander Piano Trio, loadbang, and the Yale Glee Club.
Perlman has received a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has held fellowships at MacDowell, I-Park, the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, and the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music. He is a member of the Young Academy at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz.
Perlman holds a DMA in Composition from the Yale School of Music, where his doctoral thesis received the Friedmann Thesis Prize, as well as degrees from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin.
What project will you be embarking upon during your time at the Academy?
My project links an exploration of my Jewish-Roman family history with my compositional interest in the pipe organ. I am currently working on an organ concerto commissioned by Wells Cathedral in the UK, which will premiere in spring 2028. Alongside this larger project, I am developing a work that will allow me to explore both the organ and my own ancestry.
My maternal grandfather was born in Rome in 1920 into a Jewish family with ancient roots in the city. I initially imagined creating a highly site-specific cycle of works that would engage directly with places connected to my family history. Since arriving at the Academy, however, my research and encounters with the city have opened up broader perspectives on this history, leading me to consider different ways of approaching it through music. I look forward to sharing more as the work takes shape.
What aspects of the city and Academy life are you most interested in exploring?
In addition to the personal history aspect I mentioned, I am excited to engage with Rome’s musical life, particularly its classical and contemporary music scenes. I have already enjoyed attending several Romaeuropa Festival concerts and discovering the variety of contemporary work being presented in the city.
The Academy has been an amazing resource for learning about what is happening in Rome and facilitating encounters with local musicians and artists through its advisors and network. Beyond that, I’m looking forward to the many informal encounters and conversations with artists passing through the Academy over the course of the year.
What encounters, experiences, or moments in your first days at the Academy have inspired, surprised, or encouraged you thus far?
I have had the chance to engage with visual artists and writers during previous residencies and have always enjoyed those interactions, but the Academy’s interdisciplinary community has opened up entirely new areas for me. Archaeology and Ancient Studies, for example, were fields I had not really considered before, and they have already provided new sources of inspiration and interest.
I’ve been fascinated by a site not far from the Academy, down the hill in Monteverde, where a Jewish catacomb once existed but is now covered by modern buildings. I was able to find the inscriptions from the site in the Academy’s library and asked Jordan Rogers, a Fellow in Ancient Studies, to help me work through the Latin and Greek texts and provide some context on epigraphy. In what was, for me, a very memorable afternoon, I went with Jordan and two other Fellows in Ancient Studies, Francesca LaPasta and Rebecca Kerns, to explore the site itself—or rather, its absence.
How did you prepare to move to Rome and the Academy?
As far as I know, I’m the only Fellow this year who came to Rome by car. I live in Berlin, where I mostly use my bike and public transportation. For a mix of reasons, my family and I needed to have a car in Rome, so preparing for the move meant buying one. We then drove from Berlin to Rome over four days, stopping along the way in Bavaria, the Austrian Alps, Florence, and finally Rome.
It’s a beautiful route, and watching the landscape change over such a long journey gave us time to process the fact that we were actually moving. Driving in Rome was a shock at first, but after a little over a month on the roads here, I’ve come to think of it as a surprisingly good way to experience the city, as well as the Roman psyche.