Bishara Khell is a Palestinian composer whose body of work spans chamber music, orchestral compositions, solo repertoire, and an extensive catalogue of theatre music, having written scores for over one hundred stage productions.
Born in the holy city of Nazareth in 1968, Khell was raised in a musically gifted family. In his childhood, he began his formal training on the violin and piano before eventually taking up the pipe organ, performing regularly at the Basilica Church and collaborating with church choirs. These early experiences cultivated a deep connection to sacred music and Western harmonic traditions, laying the foundation for his first explorations in composition.
At the age of 17, Khell composed music for his first theatre production, marking the beginning of his career in the performing arts. His work in this field quickly gained recognition, setting his path in motion at a very young age. Since then, Bishara Khell’s compositions have been performed internationally. Notable performances include a violin solo, piano trio, and piano quintet at Merkin Hall in New York; Dance of the Altos by the Palestinian Youth Orchestra in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey; A stage production at CAT Theatre in Seville, Spain; and Eight Frames at Ochsenhausen, Germany.
Bishara Khell has received multiple awards throughout his career, including the Best Music Work Award for his composition at the International Children’s Theatre Festival in 2005. He has also arranged and reimagined many examples of Palestinian traditional folk music, aiming to preserve and reinterpret cultural heritage through finely crafted musical settings.
In 2020 he released Distorted Reflections — a cycle of nine movements that explore the experience of viewing a scene through convex lenses, distorted and deformed in comparison to its original.
In 2025, his piano composition Eight Frames was released under the label Austrian Gramophone, performed by the pianist Juisteen Kort, marking a significant milestone in his international recording career.
In addition to his work as a composer, Khell has developed numerous software innovations, primarily in the fields of information systems, transportation, medical, and geospatial technologies. He has also designed and built a software-based biofeedback platform for therapeutic musical interaction, intended for individuals with special needs.
Software Development
As founder and CEO of “Bring To Live” – VSTLive LTD ( 2017 – Today) he is responsible of developing triggering devices (MIDI sequencers) and make them sound closer to real instruments than has ever been possible previously. he began the research for this project in 1993, with the initial focus being on the modeling qualities of orchestration, performance and composition.
As VP R&D of Datumate (2011-2017), Bishara was responsible for the (Research and Development) and leading the technical customer support. Prior to co-founding Datumate, he founded and managed Altdoit Software Solutions (2005-2011), a vendor of outsourcing services, where he was responsible for numerous successful cycles of product design, development and implementation.
Before Altdoit, Bishara held various software engineering positions in Alpha-Omega (2000-2005), a vendor of high-tech medical systems. He believes that the combination of art and science adds a significant value to both fields and that any innovative solution is a kind of art.