Jonathan Bar Giora is an Israeli composer and pianist. Since 2000, Bar Giora has composed scores and soundtracks for Israeli films such as Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi, Time of Favor and Aviva, My Love. He also worked as a composer with Israeli actors such as Yossi Banai, Rita and Rickie Gal. Bar Giora lectures at the Sapir Academic College and at Maale Film School.
Biography
Jonathan Bar Giora was born in Jerusalem, Israel, in 1962. When he was 16, he left high school and started playing in local piano bars. All through the 1980s he played jazz and wrote music-related articles for the local press. In 1990 he staged a one-man show "I'd be delighted to meet you after the plague", which he wrote, composed and performed. A secondary character in that show, Michel Clayderlast, became successful when Bar Giora created "Live Elevator Music". A performance-art show debuted at the 1990 Israel Festival, featuring Clayderlast playing 20-second bits of popular music live inside in elevator. In 1991 he staged Erua Mochi, a rock spectacle presenting a new musical style: "Live Acid". The band, led by Bar Giora, played looped music live in an attempt to reduce fears among live musicians, in a time when increasingly popular electronic and sampled music threatened to wipe all their job opportunities. 1992 was dedicated to Jesse's Carnival, a gloomy cabaret show with singer-songwriter Jonathan Licht. In 1993, Bar Giora created a Fringe theatre show named Entebbe- The Musical with Etgar Keret. Bar Giora composed all of the songs and original score, and the show won first prize at Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre. The rest of the 90s were dedicated to theater music, TV work. In 1999 he wrote the music for Pgisha Leiyn Kets, a special CD dedicated to the poetry of Nathan Alterman, read by one Israel's leading actors Yossi Banai. That same year he composed Joseph Cedar's feature filmTime of Favor. It was a first in a series of more than 120 movie scores he composed from 2000 on. On August 2018 the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem & Haifa Sinematheques held a special tribute to his work for films and television.
