I am a musician, writer and translator based in London and Tel Aviv.
Having grown up in Israel, in the late 1980s I formed the band Afor Gashum, which became prominent in the fringe scene of Israeli guitar music. In the 1990s I lived in New York City, where I studied for a PhD in Comparative Literature at New York University, and was the bass player and lead singer in the band Baby Tooth, formed with David Mecionis (drums) and Nicolas Vernhes (guitar).
In 1997 I moved to London and formed the band Zero Balancer as guitarist and lead vocalist, with Chris Warmington on guitar and Pit Reyland on drums. I wrote about literature, visual art, music and contemporary dance for various publications. After Zero Balancer disbanded I spent a couple of years as a guitar/vocals solo act under the name Moon Pilot, before being joined by Rob Sykes on bass and James Turner on drums.
In 2011 I published Hayesh Hagadol, a biography of my late grandfather Pinchas Sapir, a Labour party leader and Israeli finance minister in the 1960s and 70s. The same year I started working on a new Afor Gashum album, From the Inside, with a line-up comprising original bass player Oded Shechter, Shai Lowenstein on guitar and Aviv Barak on drums.
The third Afor Gashum album, Secret Lights, came out in April 2017. It was recorded with Oded Shechter on bass and Matan Fox on drums. We since released another album, With Hidden Noise (2020), which came out during lockdown and was accompanied by a special video art project.
My debut novel The Modern Dance was published in November 2018.
The novella Continuous Struggle, set in a future postcapitalist world, came out in 2023, as did my Hebrew translation of David Foster Wallace’s celebrated novel, Infinite Jest.
You can contact me at: mail [at] michalsapir.com
Hi Michael
Just checking up on you and hope things are well. I know you got a kick when I bought your first CD. Seems I am missing a few, must stock up again. Forgot about your comparative lit studies, my teacher at DePauw U in Greencastle Indiana was Keith Opdahl, a biographer great Saul Bellow. My other instructors would be more true to comparative, snagging me into Gide, Calvino and Borges and Unamuno. I know you can speak English, why not take the UK/US on? I don’t know what you are singing to me but I’m sure the stories told are great.
Hi John, thanks for your comment and your ongoing support. Hopefully there’ll be another album sooner rather than later, we plan to start recording some new songs soon. Borges is indeed one of my favourite writers. Taking on UK/US? Yes please. If anyone invites us over or helps us get it organized, we will surely do it.
Hi Michal,
Although I don’t know so much about his work, I really enjoyed your essay on Wittgenstein. I’m also a contributor to Tohu.
Best,
Saadi
Hi Saadi,
Thank you for your kind response!
I will look up your stuff at Tohu.
Best wishes,
Michal
Hi! I was checking your work about Hippolyte Bayard, it’s amazing ! I would love to be able to read The Modern Dance it’s such a pity that it’s not translated to English… Any plans on making a translation soon?
Also, I would love to read your these In praise of falling: Writing and the experience of the body in modernity but I can’t have access to it because I am not a NYU student, any ideas of where I could get it? This sounds like a lot but thank you for reading me I am willing to discover more about your work
Hi, thank you for your kind words and your interest! I definitely plan on translating The Modern Dance into English, but I probably won’t get to it before the summer at least.
As for the dissertation, you can maybe get hold of an essay I published which is a reworking of a couple of chapters from it: “Contact Improvisation: The Epistemology of Falling in Dostoyevsky and Poe”, in Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Ways of Knowing in the Humanities, ed. Birdsall, Boletsi, Sapir and Verstraete, Cambridge Scholars, 2009. If you’re still interested in reading the whole thing after that, I can probably send you the full text. But it’s quite long…
סתם רק רציתי להגיד לך שאני קרוי על שם סבך פינחס ספיר
נחמד מאוד! שם יפה 🙂
Hello Michal,
Amela who you met a few weeks ago (friend of Beatrix’s) told me about you, so I looked you up! I understand you did a reading of translations from your grandfather’s letters. Amela tells me that he was in government at the same time or thereabouts as was my great uncle (grandfather’s brother) and I too am going through his letters and documents (Hebrew and French).
Just thought I’d reach out and connect!
Hi Daphne, thanks for reaching out. I didn’t read from my grandfather’s letters, but from the biography I wrote about him and came out in Hebrew in 2011. You didn’t mention who your great uncle was… If you want, you can write to me at the email address listed above.