Menachem Zur was born in Israel in 1942. He has composed over 100 works, including chamber, vocal, symphonic, and electronic music, and two full-scale operas. In 2001 he was awarded the ACUM (Israeli ASCAP) prize for his life achievements. He has won two Prime Minister’s Prizes for composition. His other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981 and many other commissions and awards. Most of his works have been published in the United States and Israel. His orchestral works have received numerous performances by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

Menachem Zur is a professor emeritus at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. He has taught at Queens College, CUNY, and New York University. In 1992–94 and 2000–2003 he served as chair of the Israel League of Composers. He is a graduate of Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and he also studied in the United States at Mannes College of Music, Sarah Lawrence College, and Columbia University, where he acquired a DMA in Composition in 1976.

Mosaics is a trio for clarinet, cello, and piano. It was written in December 2015 in one movement; its duration is six minutes. Its pitch organisation uses principles of symmetries and processes that use K-Nets (from transformational theories). The work contains many consonant arpeggios and chords due to Zur’s choice of twelve-tone material based on diatonic sounds (of two consonant 6-tone chords / hexachords).