Ilan Kidron was born on 22 April 1976 in London, England. During his school life he learned to speak fluently in several languages and, as a classical graduate from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Australia, is an accomplished guitarist, flautist and pianist. Kidron studied screen composition at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and also spent time studying at the International Music Centre Ashram in Varanasi, India. Kidron plays a wide array of music. Though he comes from a background in "rock, folk, jazz, klezmer and a crooner" music, Kidron moved into dance music when he joined The Potbelleez. When describing his transition to dance, Kidron stated, "You got to find new ways to dig deep and dance music's a really good way of doing that because it's built around tension and release. The song-writing takes on a bigger form with dance music, and it's accentuated by this amazing soundscape."
Career
Early career
Early in his career, Kidron was part bands Dr Smooth and the Medicine Groove and Dopamine. As part of Dopamine, he won the University of New South Wales Band Competition in 1993. He then moved on to join the bandGlass, and did hundreds of performances around Australia. Kidron spent a few years as multi-instrumentalist for the band, Universe with Steve Balbi. As part of Universe, he released the single Be My Gun in October 1998.
The Potbelleez
As part of The Potbelleez, Ilan Kidron has released over six Top 50 Hits and two Top 20 Albums. Kidron has received two APRA Song Writing Awards for "Best Dance Work of the Year" for the songs Don't Hold Back and From the Music in 2009 and 2012 respectively.
Other works
In January 2012, Kidron formed a songwriting and production team, named "The SchooKids", with Dutch producer Louis Schoorl. The team co-wrote and produced the lead single "Gotcha" for the Australian film The Sapphires. The song was performed by Australian singer Jessica Mauboy. The team currently writes for various Australian artists such as Mauboy and Reece Mastin. Kidron's works include Ricky Martin's "Come with Me", which debuted at No. 3 on the Australian Charts and charted in 17 countries and won an award an award at the ASCAP Latin Music Awards for 'Top Pop Song', Finnish Pop singer Isac Elliot's "New Way Home" which peaked at number one on the Official Finnish Singles Chart. and Australian dance producer Tommy Trash's ARIA nominated hit "Need Me To Stay" which charted at number one on the ARIA Club Hits chart. Kidron also co-wrote Jack Vidgen's "Finding You", Tina Arena's "Love You Less", Vandalism's "Coming Alive", Emma Pask's "Season of My Heart", as well as a few tracks from Ricki Lee's fourth studio album. In 2014, Kidron formed the side project Go Comet! and released the song "Worlds Apart", which was used to soundtrack Seven News stories. The song reached number 68 on the ARIA Singles Chart in August 2014. Kidron has also produced sound tracks for films such the Academy Award Nominated Short Film, Inja. 3
The APRA Awards are presented annually from 1982 by the Australasian Performing Right Association, "honouring composers and songwriters". Kidron has won two awards from six nominations, both for Dance Work of the Year.
