Interview: Composer Hana Ajiashvili, Winner of 2026 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music

The recipients of the 2026 Azrieli Music Prizes have been announced, and as we did in 2024 we’re speaking with each of the four winners about their music, their backgrounds, and the Prize. First up is composer Hana Ajiashvili, recipient of the 2026 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music.

Ajiashvili is a Georgian-Israeli composer whose music has been performed internationally by many presitigious ensembles. She studied in Tbilisi, in Moscow, and at Bar-Ilan University, and today directs the Or Yehuda Conservatory. Her most recent works include Impossible Sketches (2023), a commission from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation; collaborations with librettist Royce Vavrek on the opera Cut Glass (2020) and the oratorio Philosophies (2023); and “Reverberations” for Big Ensemble (2025), dedicated to the birthday of her teacher, composer Vladimir Tarnopolski.

Riddle

While the other three Azrieli Prizes are commissions, the Prize for Jewish Music recognizes an extant piece of music that deserves greater exposure. Riddle premiered in 2022. It’s a work for for chorus, orchestra, and soprano in which Ajiashvili transforms a medieval verse-riddle by poet Yehuda Halevi into a meditation on persecution and resilience.

Here’s the riddle:

What’s slender, smooth and fine, and speaks with power while dumb, in utter silence kills, and spews the blood of lambs?

And here’s our interview with composer Hana Ajiashvili:

Yehuda Halevi’s riddle pictures a pen that signs death warrants as having blood flowing from its mouth, “spewing the blood of lambs.” What inspired you to build a large-scale work around this 12th-century text?

What struck me most about Yehuda Halevi’s riddle is how incredibly contemporary it feels, even though it was written in the 12th century. The image of a pen “spewing the blood of lambs” is as powerful and unsettling today as it must have been then. It speaks about the duality of creation – how the same instrument that gives voice and beauty can also wound, condemn, or destroy.

I was fascinated by this paradox and by the text’s timelessness. It could easily be mistaken for a modern poem, or even a fragment of contemporary art – its emotional and moral depth feels so current. That resonance was one of the main reasons I decided to create a large-scale musical work around it.

And there was another, more personal reason. Halevi lived in a time when Jewish people faced persecution – a reality that, tragically, still exists today. It’s painful to realize how little has changed. Through this piece, I wanted not only to reflect on the poem’s philosophical questions, but also to acknowledge that ongoing history of suffering, resilience, and the human need to keep creating despite it all.

How do you see the text as resonating with violence and antisemitism today? And how does your music reflect this meaning and resonance?

Unfortunately, Halevi’s words resonate painfully with the world we live in today. The violence and antisemitism he alluded to nearly nine centuries ago are still with us – sometimes in open, horrifying forms, sometimes hidden beneath layers of indifference or denial. That continuity is devastating. It makes his imagery – the pen as a weapon, the act of writing as an act of bleeding – feel tragically relevant.

As someone living in Israel, I know this reality firsthand – it’s not abstract for me. My family, my friends, my community – we all live with this constant sense of vulnerability. This work was written before October 7, but in a heartbreaking way, it seems to reflect the tragedy that has since touched us all.

In my music, I tried to express this resonance not through literal depiction, but through emotional and structural tension. There are moments where beauty and brutality coexist – lyrical lines interrupted by violent gestures, fragile harmonies collapsing into silence. I wanted the listener to feel that fragility and instability, that sense of life forever on the edge.

One Vision, Many Voices

Riddle is scored for symphonic orchestra and big choir. What is a “big choir” in your conception? Is it something like the choir in “In Between Waters”? [see video below] How big does the choir have to be to have the intended effect?

Thank you so much for your interest in another of my recent works. “In Between Waters” was performed by a choir of only 25 singers, which is relatively small. For me, a “big choir” means more than 40 voices – and I think the work would have sounded completely different with such a large ensemble.

I love composing for choirs when there are many polyphonic lines, using divisi to create rich, layered textures where each voice contributes to the complexity and depth of the sound. A big choir allows me to explore that density fully, making the choral part not just accompaniment, but an essential, living fabric of the music.

What are the challenges of realizing your musical vision with a full-sized orchestra and large choir, instead of the smaller ensembles for which you have often composed? And how does Riddle fit into the development of your oeuvre over your career? Does it represent something new or different?

Working with a full-sized orchestra and a large choir brings both challenges and incredible opportunities. Balancing the density of sound so that every line – orchestral or choral – remains clear is always a concern, but it also allows for a scale of expression and emotional intensity that smaller ensembles cannot provide.

Thanks to my experience working closely with performers and exploring new ways of playing instruments, I was able to bring these innovations into orchestral writing. I also often write for chamber ensembles in a way that makes them sound larger than they are, which helped me enormously. I have a deep love for color in music – my doctorate focused on the dialogue between contemporary painting and contemporary music – and composing for orchestra opened entirely new horizons for what I think of as my “colorful music.” My most recent work for piano and orchestra also resulted in a very vivid, colorful score.

Riddle fits naturally into my oeuvre as both a continuation and a new step: I continue to explore intricate polyphony, layering, and interplay between voices and instruments, but on a larger, more immersive scale. The combination of orchestra and large choir allows me to expand these ideas dramatically, making this work a distinctive landmark in my musical journey.

Old Thinking

One writer described your work as known for “indeterminate elements and complex textures” and “difficult atonal writing.” How well does this describe Riddle? And does the piece make use of extended/nontraditional techniques, instrumentally or vocally?

Yes, I would say that description captures certain aspects of Riddle, but I also think terms like “complex atonal language” feel somewhat outdated today. Why should atonal music be considered “difficult”?

Thank you for saying that, I strongly agree, but it’s hard to explain this to people sometimes.

Should contemporary classical music always be “easy” to understand? Atonal music has existed for more than a century, and simply being atonal is no longer shocking. What matters most, in my view, is that a composer develops a personal language and is able to express something meaningful through art – the technique, whether tonal, atonal, traditional, or experimental, is secondary to that.

At the same time, Riddle makes use of extended and nontraditional techniques, both instrumentally and vocally. For the instruments, I explore unconventional articulations and multiphonics, often inspired by my close collaboration with performers. For the choir, I use divisi, layered textures, and even a historical vocal technique called the trillo [a kind of tremolo on one note] (from Monteverdi).

I do not use these techniques to surprise anyone; this is simply how I hear, how I breathe, my way of expressing my inner world. In Riddle, they help convey the emotional and philosophical depth of Halevi’s text, allowing performers and the audience to inhabit that world fully.

Your cultural and musical background includes work and study in your native Georgia, in Moscow, and for many years now in Israel. Does your music reflect your experience in these multiple cultures?

Of course, these very different cultures have had a strong influence on me. Georgia is an extremely musical country, with a unique folk tradition, especially in its polyphonic singing. Have you ever listened to Georgian songs? I highly recommend them! I have been singing since birth, and any text I picked up, I naturally began to sing, often without thinking too much. In Georgia, everyone sang, so it felt completely natural to me. In addition, the Jewish community in Georgia has lived there for over 2,000 years, and in the synagogue, they still sing melodies that have been passed down through generations.

In Moscow, I discovered a new world of 20th-century music, thanks to the Moscow Conservatory and my teacher, the wonderful composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky, who is now a professor of composition in Munich. Beyond our lessons, Tarnopolsky directed the Studio for New Music ensemble, performing works by the most avant-garde composers of the time – and including students in this experience. He also organized international music festivals and masterclasses, where I had the chance to hear and meet some of the finest musicians and composers of our era. Those six years in Moscow were incredibly formative for me.

When I came to Israel, I encountered yet another phenomenon: the fusion of cultures from all over the world in one small country. The diversity and color here are unlike anywhere else. All of these experiences, of course, have deeply shaped me and my musical language.

A few years have passed since the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra premiered Riddle in December, 2022. What does receiving the 2026 Azrieli Prize for Jewish Music mean for you and your work?

I am incredibly grateful to the Azrieli Foundation for this prize. It is both a great honor and a true joy – a meaningful recognition of my work. My path has not been easy. Being a composer of contemporary classical music is challenging in itself, and even more so as an immigrant in Israel, where many people advised me to give up this profession and pursue something else. I am very glad that I trusted my own path and believed that music is my life. Receiving the Azrieli Prize reaffirms that conviction and validates the journey I chose.

One more time thank you for these interesting questions! It was a big pleasure!

Riddle will be performed at the AMP Gala Concert on October 15, 2026 and two subsequent international performances TBD. Hear more by Hana Ajiashvili here.