Draft:Nizar Elkhater

Nizar Elkhater (Arabic: نزار الخاطر) is a pianist, composer, lecturer, and conductor.

The CEO of the Harmonica Association. Since 2017, he has been presenting the podcast Alhan about arabic music. He has conducted dozens of orchestras throughout Israel and the world.

Biography
Born in Lod in 1985 to a carpenter father and an Arabic teacher mother at the Kibbutzim College Firstborn in a family of six. Studied at the Terra Santa School in Ramle. Elkhater began studying piano at the age of six. At the age of seven, he began studying at the Tel Aviv Israel Conservatory of Music. At the age of 12, he wrote several short waltzes for the piano, and two years later, he wrote an Elegy and Rhapsody. At the age of 16, he wrote his first concerto for piano and orchestra and performed it together with the youth orchestra of the conservatory in various places in Israel. In the years 2004-2009, he studied for a bachelor's and master's degree at Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. In 2021, he began studying at Bar-Ilan University for a doctorate degree.

In 2012, Nizar Elkhater founded Abaad (أبعاد) a musical ensemble with nine musicians. The ensemble combines Arabic music and classical music in its works. Today, the ensemble operates under the Harmonica Association. In 2014, Elkhater founded the Harmonica Association to make music studies accessible to underprivileged populations. In 2020, the association won a municipal tender in Lod, and since then it operates more than eight projects in the city for different populations. Among the projects are choirs, ensembles, and orchestras. From 2017, Elkhater is the artistic director of the TLV orchestra of musical youth.

Between 2018 and 2020, he managed the Ebdaa إبداع branch of the conservatory near the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem. Between the years 2019 and 2021, he served as coordinator of the national music field in the "Culture for the Periphery" project of the Ministry of Culture.

Elkhater has been teaching at the Ono Academic College since 2016 and since 2017 at Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. He also teaches at the center for traditional music "Alsheikh" in Tel Aviv.

In 2021, he wrote the music for the documentary film "The Orchestra with the Broken Instruments".

Awards
In 2002, he won a scholarship from the Stricker Conservatory for excellence in performance. Following the win, he wrote his first piano concerto. In 2005 and 2006, he won first prize in a row in the "Roma per Gerusalemme" competition.

In 2007, he won the "Musician Excellence" award of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and a special musical award for his performance of Gaspar of the Night written by Maurice Ravel in the international piano master classes at the Tel Hai Academic College. In 2009, he participated in a master class in Vienna, and won the prize for "the best performance of Schubert" for playing Schubert's 42nd Sonata.

In 2013, he won the Munir Alkalouti award for the "Abaad" ensemble project.

In 2021 he won the Prime Minister's Prize for Composers.