Here is some information about some of my next works:
In 2023 I am working on the piece POETICA, and on a violin concerto
POETICA (Duration 60 min) is written for Steve Schick, percussion and voice, soloist, 4 percussion (and voice) and 3 strings: viola cello and double bass (strings are recorded and not live), and IRCAM. This piece is commissioned by Hellerau Dresden, where the premier will be on April 12th, 2024, by IRCAM and by Monday evening series in LA, and by Steven Schick and the Percussion de Strasbourg. Carlo Laurenzi is my collaborator at IRCAM.
A violin concerto (duration: around 35 minutes long) for Ilya Gringolts and the Muenchener Kammerorchetsra, which will be premiered with Bas Wiegers conducting on April 18th. This piece is also commissioned by Musikkolegium Winterthur and it will be played by the Musikkolegium Winterthur orchestra with Ilya Gringolts and conducted by Matthias Pinscher on the 25th of May 2024.
This year I will also be working on a piece for 4 guitars for the Aleph guitar quartet. (duration around 15 minutes)
The next years will bring 2 major works for orchestra: The piece Unforeseen dusk, bones into wings, for 6 voices orchestra and Animation done by Lizzy Hobbs, and the piece NO! for orchestra and singer. There is also a string quartet on the way and a whole evening piece for SIGMA Saxophone quartet for 2025.
In 2022 two pieces were written:
Fast Darkness III, the last installment in the series Fast Darkness, for flute, Clarinet, piano, and string trio. The piece was premiered in Ultima Festival Norway, by Temporum Ensemble and Kai Grinde Myrann conducting.
Seltene Erde alchimia communicationis (35’) for double bass with 4 recorded double basses, and 2 clarinets, Bassoon, saxophone(s), accordion, trumpet, 2 trombones Piano, Cembalo (on a sampler), 2 percussionists a string quartet and double bass. This is a commission of Zagreb Biennale, Warsaw Autumn and Wien Modern, and it will be premiered by Klangforum with Uli fussenegger on all contrabass voices and Johannes Kalitzke conducting.
In 2021 after much day dreaming and preparatory work, I started directly writing the triptych VENA. VENA is comprised of three full evening pieces, performed individually or in succession over 3 evenings.
Unhistoric Acts was written mainly in 2020-2021. In July 2021 all the preparatory work is gathered, and the work is focused on IMMATERIAL . The last piece in the cycle, for Steven Schick, Percussion de Strasbourg, (live) and Catinblack (only recorded) and IRCAM will be written in 2023.
Here is the plan for the full cycle.
VENA (current, vein, pulse) A triptych 2020-2023
Three large scale pieces which are written between the years 2020- 2023:
POETICA; Unhistoric Acts; IMMATERIAL .
First panel: POETICA
for Steve Schick, percussion and voice, soloist, 4 percussion and 3 strings: viola cello and double bass (strings recorded and not live), and IRCAM Duration 60 min.
Middle panel: Unhistoric Acts
Unhistoric Acts is written for and dedicated to JACK string quartet and mixed 24 voices Choir Duration: 55minutes. SWR choir in Germany. Premier: Oct 14 /2021 donaueschinger Musiktage, American premier Philadelphia June 25 /2022.
“for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and things which are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the member who lived faithfully a hidden life and the rest is in unvisited tombs”- George Eliott / Middlemarch.
The text is comprised of 3 types of materials:
1-From Kohelet Ecclesiastes chapter 3: “everything has an appointed season, and there is a time for every matter under the sky. A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot”.
2-words taken from the context of George Floyd's murder. His sister's words, Bridgett Floyd: “He was never a stranger, and the words of Darnella Frazier who took the video of George Floyd. " I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life"
3- Words thought off and spoken by the choir which every singer brings from their own world according to some indication. Mainly these individually spoken texts are about the pandemic.
This is a piece of rage and mourning. Rage about George Floyd's murder and the historical injustice it brings to the fore and mourning during the Covid pandemic. I would like to thank Amnon Wolman and Dorothea Hartmann for their help with figuring the piece out as I was composing.
Final, third panel: A speculation IMMATERIAL
An acapella Book of madrigals and an opera for Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart premier Feb/ 2022 Eclat. Austrian premier in Klangspueren Festival, Sept 2022 50'-65’ I am grateful to the Neue Vocalsolisten for their generosity and help with testing things, recording stuff, etc.
all singers are amplified.
This piece is the summation of the cycle and perhaps the most daring jump into a new form, and a new form of expression: utmost physicality combined with utmost abstraction and modulating between the senses.
The first movement is a book of madrigals, for six voices. The book is a live archive of short connected fragments, each fragment combining one of our senses and one of the universal sensation, for example: touch - sadness/// smell - surprise /// hearing - delirium///
The composition of these distilled fragments invents an experience of listening: each of the fragments evokes a different way to tune one's ears: the listener can smell, taste, see, hear or touch an essence of sensation or emotion. I have worked in this direction in the recent years touching on it tangentially, but never so directly and with such a strong focus on this question of pure and most immediate sensorial perception. By making this a main concern in this book of madrigals I hope to undertake a jump towards a new form of expression, extremely direct and physical to the degree that it becomes a kind of sensorial drama of naked emotions/ sensations. No story or explanations.
The main part of IMMATERIAL is the imagined, immaterial opera. The sensorial drama of the madrigals will become a wordless /storyless opera where pure sensations and modulations between sensory perceptions from visual sound to felt (touched) sound for example create an experience where the listener is provoked to become their own storyteller as sound becomes a provocation, a trigger of experience.
In the Future, this last panel might become a base for 2 additional versions: one with a chamber ensemble of 12 instruments and one with the chamber ensemble plus an orchestra.