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Music becomes a meeting place: ancient words, modern ears, ritual memory and living performance.
Composer · Double-bassist · Conductor · Writer
Max
Stern
A musical voice shaped by biblical imagination, Eastern and Western traditions, and the living resonance of the concert hall.
His work brings together sacred text, orchestral color, chamber intimacy and a deep ear for the expressive power of ancient sources in contemporary sound.
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A life in sound
Between heritage and invention
Max Stern’s music inhabits a world of prayer, memory, desert light, orchestral gesture and intimate chamber dialogue.
Max Stern is known as a composer, performer, conductor, musicologist, critic and educator. His catalogue is closely associated with biblical sources, Jewish musical memory, and a personal language that blends East and West with contemporary classical writing.
His artistic path includes the double bass, orchestral and chamber composition, choral music, educational work and writing about music. The result is a body of work that feels both scholarly and deeply human — rooted in tradition, yet searching forward.
His compositions and recordings open a wide landscape: psalms, prophecy, ancient instruments, desert atmosphere, folk memory, theatrical scenes and concert works of formal clarity.
East · Westbiblical sources and contemporary idioms
Voice · Bass · Orchestraa wide musical language
Books · Scores · Recordingscreative work across media
Selected music
Works with a sacred horizon
Orchestral color, chamber detail and vocal expression meet in a catalogue shaped by text, place and memory.
Song of the Morning Stars
An orchestral work that evokes light, grandeur and the poetry of creation.
Balaam and the Ass
A dramatic chamber score where biblical narrative becomes instrumental theatre.
Perek Shira
A meditation on the song of creation, bringing narration and orchestral sonority into a single arc.
Jacob and the Angel
A concert work inspired by struggle, transformation and spiritual encounter.
Ha’azinu
A work connected to the Song of Moses, drawing depth from scripture and the voice of the double bass.
Piyutasia
A Sephardic fantasy that turns traditional melodic memory into refined chamber music.
Prophecy for the End of Days
A large expressive vision where voice, ensemble and symbol move toward revelation.
Messer Marco Polo
Stage music with historical imagination, theatrical color and a broad dramatic canvas.
Visual album
Images from the musical world
Portraits, performances, readings and video stills gathered into a concert-like gallery.
Watch
A hall of performances and conversations
Choose a video below. The selected work opens in the main player without leaving the page.
Recordings
Albums and musical documents
Recordings reveal the breadth of the catalogue: orchestra, chamber music, choral writing, stage works and biblical scenes.
Retrospective
A broad musical portrait across orchestral, chamber and vocal works.
Folk memory
Traditional melodies transformed through a composer’s ear for color and form.
Ancient instruments
A fascination with the sound world of biblical harps and early musical imagination.
Legacy
Ancient sources, modern resonance
Max Stern’s music does not treat tradition as a museum object. It lets old texts breathe again through timbre, rhythm, silence and the expressive body of the performer.