About
Or Oren is an award-winning Israeli composer, conductor, and trombonist. Born in Netanya, Israel (1993), he began his music education at the age of nine, starting with trombone classes through a school music program and later that year studying at the Netanya Conservatory.
During his studies at the conservatory, alongside his electronics studies in high school, he performed with the Netanya Youth Wind Orchestra and a Brass Quintet as both a player and soloist throughout the country and abroad, including Italy, Germany, and Hungary.
He wrote his first compositions at age fifteen, and one of them, First Suite in Bb for Wind Orchestra, was performed by the Youth Orchestra in the summer of 2009, conducted by Motti Miron. During this period, he received awards and scholarships from both the Conservatory and Netanya City Hall, and was also a member of the Young Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra.
"Life is about choices, and I chose to become a musician"
-Or Oren
After graduating from ORT Yad-Lebovitz High School and the Netanya Conservatory, he was accepted and recruited to the IDFO (Israel Defense Force Orchestra), where he served as both an orchestra player and librarian (2011–2014). During his military service, he composed a march titled Ale Shel Za’it. The piece was later performed in 2015 by the Be’er Sheva Wind Orchestra—one of Israel’s leading wind orchestras—conducted by Or himself, and was subsequently selected for inclusion in the official IDFO ceremonial repertoire.
In 2013, he was accepted into the Jazz Institute program at the Rimon School of Music in Ramat HaSharon, led by Ronen Shmueli (Berklee alumnus). His teachers and mentors there included Yoni Rechter, Avishai Cohen, and Mordy Ferber.
In 2014, during his studies at Rimon, he began working as a trombone teacher, and a year later became a school program supervisor and youth orchestra conductor. After graduating from Rimon, he auditioned for Berklee College of Music (Boston, MA) and received a scholarship to attend the undergraduate program.
As a trombonist, he has shared the stage with prominent Israeli and international musicians including Rami Kleinstein, Sarit Hadad, Kobi Aflalo, Ellis Hall, Billy Cobham, Mark Whitfield, Eyal Vilner, and many others.
In 2015, he was commissioned by the IMPJ (Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism) to compose a work based on the music of Debbie Friedman. A year later, The Debbie Friedman Suite was recorded and performed in May 2016 at the IMPJ Biennial Convention in Israel, and in Boston at the WURJ Humanitarian Awards Dinner in December 2017. Additional performances took place in Brazil, Holland, and New Hampshire, with further performances postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
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In September 2016, he moved to Boston and began his undergraduate studies at Berklee College of Music, majoring in Film Scoring and Conducting. While at Berklee, he worked as the Film Scoring Department Assistant and received the Doug Timm Award in recognition of his achievements as an outstanding senior student.
In his role as Film Scoring Department Assistant, he worked closely with visiting artists including Thomas Newman.
After graduating in 2018, Or moved to Los Angeles, where he currently lives and works primarily in the television music industry.
He has worked extensively in television, contributing to the scores of The Resident (FOX), Party of Five (Freeform), and Goliath (Amazon), collaborating with Primetime Emmy–nominated composers Jon Ehrlich and Jason Derlatka. On Goliath, he was featured as a solo trombonist and helped develop sound-design textures derived from live brass recordings that became part of the show’s sonic identity. He has also collaborated with Academy Award–winning composer Rachel Portman on We Were the Lucky Ones, contributing performance and technical expertise to the score. Additional credits include Tom and Jerry in New York, an animated sequel series for HBO, composed by Itamar Ben Zimra.
In addition to his work in television, Or has composed music for advertisements, short films, podcasts, and theater. In May 2021, Miriam – The First Woman Prophet was performed twice after being postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The musical tells the story of Miriam’s life—from rescuing her brother Moses to leading the Hebrew people to the threshold of the Holy Land—using music by Debbie Friedman, arranged for vocalists and band by Or.
One of his recent works includes the score for the short film Another Life (2020), which won a Platinum Remi Award at the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival for Best Original Music in the Shorts category.