Recordings of his music can be found on a variety of labels including the premiere recording of his Concerto for violin and orchestra with Michael Guttman and the London Philharmonic for ASV Records, London.

 

Mr. Zehavi’s compositions have been supported by numerous grants, awards and prizes from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts (USA), Barlow Foundation (USA), Annenberg Trust (USA), America-Israel Cultural Foundation as well as the Israel Ministry of Culture (1995 & 2014 Prime Minister’s Prize for Composition), City of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (Engel Prize), Israel Discount Bank, Israeli Society of Composers and Music Publishers (ACUM), Rosenbloom Prize for Performing Arts (2005) and the 2005 Landau Prize for Stage Arts.

 

Mr. Zehavi is on the faculty of the Department of Music at the University of Haifa since 1995 (where he was a founding member and former Chair) and holds the rank of Professor. His academic and pedagogical interests include systems of analysis, ear training, history and analysis of opera, folk music, orchestration and recording studio techniques of production. He is in demand as a public speaker and concert lecturer in both English and Hebrew on a variety of musical topics ranging from Haydn to John Cage and including the business of music, popular culture and commercialism. 

 

In addition to composing over 100 works for solo instruments, lied, chamber ensembles, choir and symphony orchestra, Mr. Zehavi is an avid arranger and composer of music for theatre, dance, feature film and documentaries. Recent genre-bending projects have included a work for two rock vocalists and chamber orchestra ('The Mighty and Enlightened'), 'Tzlil' ('Sound') for choir, chamber ensemble and audience, as well as the soundtrack for the experimental documentary 'Natural Life' by director Tirtza Even (Art Institute of Chicago). He has written musical soundtracks for the BBC, ABC, Canal Plus, and over 100 of his arrangements of folk music can be found in the archives of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA). 

​

Zehavi was the Music Director for the Israeli Music Festival from 2019-21, presenting a week-long series of free concerts featuring Israeli music from all genres throughout the country during the fall holiday period each year. In response to the Corona virus pandemic, the festival moved all its activities online and succeeded in reaching a large percentage of the national audience through its streaming efforts, as well as giving needed financial and emotional support to many Israeli musicians and composers.

​

He was a recording producer (tonmeister) with Eshel Sound Studios (Israkol), pariticipating in recordings and livestreams with the Israel Philharmonic at Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv, as well as the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition for Mezzo Cable Television. Recent recording projects have included recording and editing live performances of the IPO with artists such as Zubin Mehta (Falstaff), Christoph von Dohnányi (Dvorak 7, Schumann 2) and Vladimir Jurowski (Pique Dame) for commercial release. Symphonie Fantastique with Gianandrea Noseda and the IPO, as well as Bruckner Symphony 8 with Mehta and the IPO have already been released on the Helicon label in 2014. 

 

Oded is also Chief Editor of Music and a contributor for the Encyclopaedia Hebraica's forthcoming online edition (Schocken Publishing House). His series of lectures on methodology and analysis of Israeli pop and rock classics are available through Haifa University Online Courses beginning with the 2013-14 academic year. Other scholarly activities include the publication of a book on Meir Ariel with Professor Nissim Calderon (Ben-Gurion University) as well as the  pending completion of a book on the Shofar. He also heads the Repertoire Committee for Elementary and Secondary Education at the National Culture Division of the Israel Ministry of Education (Sal Tarbut).

 

He holds advanced degrees in music from the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music (BAMus), University of Pennsylvania with George Crumb (M.Mus.) and State University of New York at Stony Brook (PhD).

 

Oded, a 2015 Schusterman Visiting Artist, was in residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, United States for the fall 2015 semester. During this residency he participated in the ‘Violins of Hope’ project with a performance of his work ‘Seagull’ for violin and piano by Cleveland Institute of Music faculty members Antonio Pompa-Baldi and Joan Kwuon as well as collaborating with choreographer David Shimotakara and the Groundworks Dance Theatre on the commission of ‘Shadowbox’. Professional appointments have also included residencies and fellowships with the Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Frankel Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Israel Northern Symphony-Haifa (the first post of its kind in Israel), Israel Chamber Orchestra, Jerusalem Music Centre, Israel Sinfonietta Beersheva and Israel Camerata Jerusalem.