Chaya Czernowin was born and educated in Israel. At the age of 25, she continued her studies abroad in Germany and the United States, and then was invited to live in Tokyo and Vienna through several fellowships. Her music has been performed throughout the world, by some of the best orchestras and performers of new music. Her works have been played in many of the foremost concert halls and music festivals in Europe and also in Japan, Korea, Australia, the US, and Canada. 

 

She was the first woman to be appointed as a composition professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria and at Harvard University, where she has been the Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music since 2009.

 

She was composer in residence in Salzburg Festival 2005-06, Lucerne Festival 2013, and Huddersfield Festival in 2021. Czernowin’s work was awarded the Composer Prize from the Siemens Foundation, GEMA musikautorinen Preis; a Guggenheim fellowship, and Rockefeller, Fromm, and Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at Darmstadt Ferienkurse, among many others. Her WERGO portrait CD The Quiet was awarded the Quarterly German Record Critics’ Award. She is a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin and the Akademie der Schönen Künste Munich and is on the board of the European Musiktheater Akademie.