Before I continue to explain my framework to describe music, I have to share something that happened to me three days ago. I was composing a prayer for Sinai Temple, a cantorial, very tonal, piece, and I decided to look into the last piano pieces I composed before I started to compose choral music. I listened to my 12 preludes and to a piece called Melody,Harmony and Rhythm. These pieces haven’t seen the light of day yet, nobody has played them. But something very curious happened. I loved the Preludes and then I couldn’t quite grasp the Melody, Harmony and Rhythm one. I listened to that piece several times, its three sections, and it started to come back to me what I had been doing and I realized that piece was probably the deepest expression of myself I had attempted to date. I had been skipping concerts of new music because I didn’t like most of what I heard and I had been writing mostly tonal music. Sometimes in my choral music I would use extended harmonies (not your normal chords but different, more dissonant ones), bitonality (two scales used at the same time), modal harmonies (medieval scales) and I enjoyed doing that but after hearing my Melody, Harmony & Rhythm I realized earlier I had been on a deep quest to discover my own music, something more unique, and that I had put it aside for a while to write music that more people could understand. However, I realized that when I left the search it had really started to get to a different level and that I could not abandon it any more than I could abandon music itself in my life. So I just wanted to let you know that whatever else I do in my musical life, I will keep this exploration going and, hopefully, I will get to where this journey has been taking me for many, many years.
The Latest News
It is now the Winter of 2024. I finished several new works at the end of last year: Overcoming, for the John Muir High School Choir, Hineni (Here I Am) for the San Fernando Valley Master Chorale and Jarocho L.A. for the Centennial High School Band. In December, my work Echoes of Mexico was premiered by the Pierce College Band. I am involved with the Helfman Composers Group in the setting of poetry by Israeli authors about the October 7 attack. Additionally, I am at the research phase of a new work for choir called Galut (Exile), a cantata which will portray the Jewish exile from the year 70 A.D. to the present. Right now I am looking for original writings, including diaries, poems, letters, describing the different Jewish communities in Europe and Asia after the fall of the Second Temple. And I’m trying to get The Nightmare and the Dream; Herzl and the Creation of Israel, in the hands of a small group that can perform the work at low expense in different venues.