Shmuel Zeltser

Shmuel Zeltser

Zeltser is a musician, translator, and architect. He was born in Tashkent in 1984, on Pushkin’s birthday, and named after his late grandfather, who fought in the Second World War. He came to Jerusalem with his family in 1990, just in time for the Gulf War’s gas masks distribution. Zeltser acquired his musical and lyrical education privately, and started writing, composing, and performing when he was just 12 years old. In 2006 he founded the band Alla Esh and in 2011 he released his first solo album. At 16, he started translating into Hebrew the golden era songs of Russian rock and chanson, making sure that the translated songs could be sung in fluent and current Hebrew. In 2015, the collection of translated poems has evolved into the project Iron Poems (titled after the iron curtain behind which they were hidden for years), scheduled to be released soon, with the musical production of Zeltser himself.