Daniel Alcheh is a Hollywood-based film and television composer. In 2009, he scored a wide range of feature films and television programs: The thriller Nowhere to Hide, starring Meredith Monroe, Brian Dietzen and Brian Krause; The horror-comedy The Man Who Collected Food; the documentary feature Houston We Have A Problem, and Iris Bahr's new comedy series, Svetlana. To wrap up the year, he will be scoring director Michael Knowles' East Fifth Bliss, starring Michael C. Hall. Daniel's music has been widely licensed and can often be heard on The National Geographic Channel, PBS, BET and The History Channel.
Born in Israel, Daniel Alcheh began playing the piano at age six, and was seriously pursuing the path of a composer by his teens. Fostered by the biggest names in Israeli contemporary music, he studied composition, conducting and orchestration. Alcheh became one of the youngest-ever members of the Israeli Composers League (the Israeli chapter of the ISCM) where he served as a board member and panel judge, and while still in his early 20s, was awarded the league's Klon Prize for Composition. He completed both his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in composition at the music academy at Tel-Aviv University.
While still an undergraduate, Alcheh began scoring films and animation. In 2001, his professor Yosef Bardanashvili, one of Israel’s most renowned and prolific composers, would bring him aboard as a soundtrack producer for Dover Kosashvili's feature film Late Marriage: the highest-grossing Israeli film of the decade, one of Entertainment Weekly's Ten Best Films of 2002 and Newsweek's Top 15 Films of 2002.
In 2002, Alcheh’s virtuoso violin-solo piece, “Nocturne and Aubade,” was chosen as the obligatory contemporary piece for competitors to perform at the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition. That same year, the Israel Festival in Jerusalem opened with his piece "Trains" for percussion, string quartet and electronics, a piece that was commissioned by Ziv Eitan, one of Israel’s leading percussion soloists. A month later, Alcheh appeared as a guest composer to The 22nd Asian Composers League Festival in Seoul, Korea, where his "String Trio” for Violin, Viola and Cello was a prizewinner. Also in 2002, his ballet piece "No Exit" was choreographed in Germany and performed to high acclaim throughout Europe and the Middle East.
A simultaneous thread to Alcheh’s classical-contemporary music career has been his deep involvement with technology, electronic music and recording. In 2001, he became a part of the Center for Computer Aided Music at Tel-Aviv University and worked at the multimedia department of the Israel Open University. He also co-produced the UNISEX album, the largest budget independent Israeli pop production in history.
In 2002, Alcheh was invited as a visiting scholar to the Music Technology Department at Chicago's Northwestern University. This appointment was enabled by a grant from the AICF, America-Israel Culture Foundation. While in Chicago, he wrote his demanding "Dying Pianos" for piano duo and recorded sound. Created through a framework of measures growing ever closer, the piece is a kind of black hole collapse: it crushes itself with sounds that seem to have grown malignantly out of control. “Dying Pianos” would premiere in Tel-Aviv, performed by the renowned Israeli Piano Duo, who commissioned the piece.
Daniel's concert music is published by IMC (Israeli Music Center, and it continues to be premiered and performed throughout the world.
Always check the homepage for the latest news regarding new projects and scores.