Meet Aviram Spies | Composer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Aviram Spies and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Aviram, what do you think makes you most happy? Why?
As cliché as it may sound, with all honesty, in the end, music making makes me the most happy. No matter to context, the capacity, the situation or the scale, large, small – It can be alone in my room playing the piano, or at a concert hall with a full audience, at the recording studio, or with a melodica at a bonfire with my best friends by the sea.
I feel sometimes that by going to the piano, improvising and seeing where the music takes me, enables me to communicate with people in a truly deep and intimate way that’s often hard to imitate otherwise.
Going with my curiosity for music, exploring different genres of music, and different ways of music making in general, collaborating with incredible creative people, sharing ideas with each-other and finding it an audience, these things excite me and makes me happy.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
As a composer I try to be as versatile as possible, weather it’s writing music for film and video games, composing orchestral music and releasing it to the world, or working with my band ShanYah on my Funk/Jazz side of things, I love to explore everything as much as I can. There are many professional challenges that I keep facing from time to time.
After working for many years both in the industry but also trying to learn as much as possible the theory and be proficient in what I do, comes the next challenge which is reaching out to new and interesting people and projects to work on. That’s an ongoing work that you’ve go to keep pushing and moving forward, it’s not easy, but it’s also really fun and I learn a lot while doing so, trying to be more present in Film Festivals, talking to new film directors, meeting incredible composers in thee film industry, which most of them turn later into beautiful relationships.
The main lesson I’m learning is to always keep moving and work hard in order to allow ‘luck’ to come through the door.
Often there are many lucky opportunities, but they are also very rare and requires a lot of effort to find, so the main barrier is time and persistence in my opinion.
As a composer I try to create a very sincere music that hopefully speaks from my heart and goes to the listeners’.
Writing with true intentionality and honesty is truly difficult and challenging, but this is part of the endless musical search that we’re doing as composers.
In my new album ‘Little Tales’ I’m trying to portray that and have written small orchestral pieces that represent small stories inspired by life, poems, short stories and so much more and I hope that through this piece, people would get inspired just like I was by these stories.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
For a good night hangout, I’d go to ‘The Local Peasant’ – A fun bar in Sherman Oaks where they have delicious food, craft beers, great cocktails and the best onion rings in town in my opinion! My favorite spot in the city though is ‘Ideology Coffee’ for sure!
If I’m not working on my music in my studio, I’m doing office work in this coffee shop most of my time.
It’s on Venture on the Sherman Oaks side, and they have the most perfect coffee to keep you going all day long, and it’s a genuinely sweet and calm space.
Aside from that I go to the library to relax and work in a more quiet space.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I would love to give a big Shoutout to a composer that many people may know, but in may opinion he should get way more recognized and that is Maurice Ravel, a french composer from the early 20th century. Like almost every artist, he kept self deprecating himself in many ways, and downplaying his work, and that is a shame, because I genuinely believe he’s one of the greatest composers ever.
It’s both a shoutout to an incredible musician, but also a lesson for all of us, to be happy with the journey that we have, along side being ambitious and wanting to change your personal story.
So what if he didn’t write as many pieces as Mozart…

Website: https://www.aviramspies.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sp.aviram/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviram-spies-762a0380/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AviramSp

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AviramSpies

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aviramspies