ֿSebba serves as Music Director of the Israeli Opera Meitar Opera Studio, Conductor-in-Residence of the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra, conductor at the Israeli Opera, senior lecturer at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Music Director and conductor of choirs, participates in world choir festivals and regularly performs in concerts and recordings in Israel and around the world as a conductor, pianist and singer.
He holds a Master’s degree in composition and a Master’s degree in singing with honors from the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. He studied conducting at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance with Mendi Rodan. He has won scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, the “Most” Foundation and the New Israeli Opera, the “Israeli Institute of Singing Arts” and first place in the singing competition at the Academy.
Winner of the Rosenblum Award for Performing Arts on behalf of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality for 2020.
David Sebba’s musical endeavors include composition, musical arrangements, orchestration, editing, translation and writing opera libretti and art songs. Musical direction, performance on stage as conductor, pianist, singer and conductor as well as in academic teaching.
David Sebba wrote libretto and music for the opera “Alice in Wonderland” based on Lewis Carroll, for the Israeli Opera which staged it and toured it throughout Israel and the opera “Mothers” which lends its voice to the various women from Book of Genesis. It was staged at the Opera Fringe, the Mandel Cultural Center and the Israeli Opera. Among his works performed on stage: Suite for Violin and Orchestra “Years of Light” – a musical expression for a cycle of songs he wrote following a trip he made, as a travelogue to pre-Holocaust life, landscapes and melodies. Suite for Piano and Orchestra “Umbrellas in Paris – Homage to French Cinema”, “Song of Songs”, a song cycle for soprano and tenor, incidental music and more.
He wrote a parody of opera and art song, Opera in Madness, which he had also performed as a solo singer accompanied by the pianist Irit Rub and later accompanied by five different orchestras in Israel over 150 times, and filmed for television in Israel and around the world.
David Sebba has created a number of musical collage performances: “Orpheus Passion” (an original Hebrew libretto according to the myth of Orpheus set to music from Bach’s liturgical works), “The Desecration of Magic” (operatic stand-up with singers Keren Hadar and Hila Baggio that humorously depicts the behind-the-scenes life of the opera world alongside performances of arias and songs. The show was performed with piano and also with several orchestras conducted and accompanied by Sebba).
David Sebba has translated and adapted various libretti into Hebrew, to be sung by children and communities, such as Cenerentola (Rossini), The Barber from Tikva (based on The Barber of Seville / Rossini), L’elisir d’amore (Donizetti), Carmen in Tel Aviv (based on Bizet’s Carmen), Le Nozze di Figaro (Mozart). These works were performed on stages around Israel under his direction. They were translated and adapted as part of the Israeli Opera initiative, to make the operatic work accessible to children, enable opera performances throughout the country and actively engage the community.
The relationship between text and music in art song and opera, and the way in which the poem and music redeem and enhance one another have occupied Sebba since childhood. He researched this phenomenon in his Master’s Degree and has since translated many operas and art songs in ways which are music sensitive and adapted to vocal requirements.
Among the works he translated in this way and which were performed on the Opera stage and on other stages: Die Fledermaus (Johann Strauss II), Noha’s Flood (Britten), Va Pensiero (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Verdi’s Nabucco), a choir excerpt from La Fanciulla del West (Puccini), a duet from Don Giovanni (Mozart), a duet from La Traviata (Verdi), twenty Lieder by Richard Strauss, Songs and Dances of Death by Mussorgsky, songs by Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and more.
David Sebba wrote many hundreds of arrangements and orchestrations for the best artists in Israel (Yehoram Gaon, Rita, Kaveret, Ethnics, Miki Gavrilov, Yonatan Razel, David D’Or and many others) played by all the orchestras in the country.
David Sebba regularly conducts a wide repertoire of works in Israel and around the world (classical music, music from movies, Israeli songs, folk, Jewish music and more). In Israel he has conducted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon Lezion, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Symphonietta Beer Sheva, the Netanya Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra, the Haifa Symphony Orchestra, the Ramat Gan Chamber Orchestra and the Raanana Symphonette.
Abroad, Sebba has conducted the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra in Russia, the Houston Symphony Orchestra in Texas, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra in Tennessee, the Sinfonietta Romana in Italy, the Baku Philharmonic Orchestra om Azerbaijan, the Elmetti Symphony Orchestra in Kazakhstan, the Johannesburg Festival Orchestra in South Africa and more.
As a conductor at the Israeli Opera, he has conducted productions of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Manon Lescaut, La Traviata, Alice in Wonderland, as well as community productions of Die Zauberflöte, L’Elisir d’amore, Cenerentola and many other productions and operatic concerts with the best Israeli opera singers.
With the Raanana Symphonette, which Sebba serves as Conductor-in-Residence, he has performed classical concerts throughout Israel, as well as concerts with various instrumental ensembles and the best Israeli singers, special projects, homage and tribute concerts to composers and poets, park concerts, guided school concerts, national ceremonies and more. Sebba has conducted the Raanana Symphonette in concert tours to Canada and Ponat and on TV shows such as Live with Dan Shilon.
The choirs Zemer Lach, Shiran, Ron Holon (in the past also Carmel and Man to Man) performed under his direction at international festivals and competitions and won various awards.