Instrumental and Vocal Music*
*Scores available upon request
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Multiple orchestrations available as listed
REVERBERATIONS
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Amplified Violin and Viola (Coda)
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Cello (Coda only, with arrangement to Kel Maleh Rachamim))
Los Angeles Jewish Music Commission
FIRST PLACE, 2024 Biennial Music Competition, National League of American Pen Women
Reverberations resounds through time and sound with motivic echoes, quivers, tremolos, delays depicting a dream sequence full of memories, running figures full of frenetic warning, and the collapse of melody leading to repeated brutality. Yiddish folk songs are manipulated in an effort to convey a ‘pre,’ ‘peri’ and ‘post’ Kristallnacht. In ‘pre’, sound bites and their disruptions convey hopes dashed amidst warnings of oncoming disaster. In ‘peri’, clips become more abrupt, open-ended and agitated depicting ugliness and marching Nazi perpetrators. In ‘post’ or coda, the devastation and haunting result is clear.
THE CODA from Reverberations (Solo Viola)
Written as a response to the atrocities of the Holocaust, the Coda speaks to its devastation and haunting, relentless grief. The Coda, as a stand-alone piece, has been performed independently several times. Here is a version, performed as part of UCLA’s Lowell Milken Fund’s performance at Art Share LA with Jeffrey Steinberg, violin and Nicole Powell, dancer and choreographer. Please listen to the repeated notes, the deliberate glissandi, and the stark and clean images of violinist and dancer.
A LETTER FELL OUT OF THE SKY
1. a letter fell out of the sky
2. Caminhamos e Andhamos/We Are Walking and Going
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Narrator, Mezzo-Soprano, Chorus, Orchestra
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Narrator, Mezzo-Sop., Chorus, Large Ensemble
LA Jewish Symphony Commission
1. With the sudden arrival of the edict, this letter that 'fell' from the sky, a mother’s mournful cry awakens the Spanish Jews. The melodic inspiration is the Spanish romance/lament De Burgos Partio Ese Rey (The King Left Burgos) which is still sung today as a lament on Tisha B'Av (a mournful holiday lamenting the destruction of the holy temple in Jerusalem
2. Full choir, full joy, an exodus of great proportions. Comparing the exodus from Egypt to the exodus from Spain, this is an inspiring “major”celebration of hope and belief that the outcome of this journey from Spain will only lead to a new and improved beginning. This is why the text to a Portuguese traveler’s prayer is used and why the joyous Miriam celebrates with her tambourine and dances. The chorus here is vital to this celebration since the Jewish people moved forward as a nation.
AT ENDS
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Solo Violin
2018 North/South Consonance Call for Scores
To View AT ENDS—THE TRANSFORMATION:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1p-azEKypY&t=17s
QUID PRO QUO
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Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Violin, Cello
First Place, Serge Garant Award, SOCAN
First Place, Brian M. Israel Prize
AT ENDS sets up a pair of themes that are at ends with each other, that is, which contrast each other by their unique use of register, tempo, thematic and pitch materials. At Ends was written while I was a fellow of the California Summer Arts Composers Workshop held at Cal State Long Beach. Written specifically as a virtuoso solo for Curt Macomber (whom you'll hear on the recording), the title of the work also describes the limited time I had to get the piece done!
Quid Pro Quo is an animated and active tit for tat. In its playfulness, extended ranges and techniques, constantly varying textures, perpetual motion versus silences, and highly chromatic harmonic language, the piece plays into the idea of an ensemble playing against each other. The formal plan of Quid pro Quo was that a ritornello idea of the opening (tutti) becomes the later melodic idea, while the earlier melodic idea becomes the second ritornello. In the end, the ensemble members, ‘fight it out’ to see what they have in common.
BEAUTY AND THE DANCE OF WONDER
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Piano Solo (first recording here)
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Large Ensemble and Male Chorus
Max Helfman Fellow and UCLA Collaboration: David's Quilt
The piece unfolds, setting the scene in which the beautiful wife of King David, Michal, observes his rapturous dance. The music already holds and foreshadows the tenseness of what will follow. Here the tension is harmonic, more subliminal and more subtle.
SUITE HEBRAICA, THE STAIN OF BLOOD
1. Whose Dawn
2. In the Darkness
3. The Stain Remained on the Wall
The Bruce Geller Memorial Prize, WORD Grant Recipient
The Stain of Blood is based on three Israeli poems which do not deal directly with the Holocaust, but together as a suite, encompass an urgency of oncoming darkness and survival. Avraham ben Yitshak’s Whose Dawn (Shachar Shel Mi), proclaims the coming of a dawn whose sun is hidden. It is foreboding poetry, foreshadowing an oncoming darkness.
In Amir Gilboa’s In the Darkness (Baaletet), ending with "If they show me blood, and I say blood, they say paint," the poem denotes a lack of transparency, a lack of acknowledging reality. David Avidan’s, The Stain Remained on the Wall (HaKetem Nishar al Hakir), deals with attempts by those 'skilled hands' to alleviate the effects of blood that has been shed.
The music itself displays this hopeless urgency both stylistically, with its dense harmonies, agitated rhythms and overlapping textures and as well as dramatically with its use of both the spoken and sung word.
JEPHTHAH'S DAUGHTER
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Flute (Piccolo), Clarinet (Eb Cl., Bass Cl.), Trumpet,
Percussion, Harp, Soprano Soloist, Viola, Contrabass
ASCAP Foundation Grant to Young Composers,
Honorable Mention
Jephthah’s Daughter is a solo cantata in three movements based on a text by Nathaniel Parker
Willis titled, Jephthah’s Daughter. Within the introduction to the third movement, a few verses from Judges 11:30, 31 are utilized in order to
connect the Biblical account of Jephthah’s daughter to Willis’s descriptive narrative. This excerpt
is set in Hebrew.
COME,BREAK WITH TIME
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SSATB (soloists or chorus)
HEAR ME AT DAWN
1. Here Me At Dawn, slowly awakening
2. Shim’u Melachim/Hear, King of all Kings, allegro
3. Ein Kadosh K'Hashem/Nothing as Holy as G-d, cantabile
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Soprano, Chamber Ensemble
Commission, Shechina, Women's Spirituality in the Arts
ILLUMINATIONS
1. Hanukkah Candle Blessings
2. Maoz Tsur/Rock of Ages
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Full Orchestra, Baritone Solo and Chorus
LA Jewish Symphony Commission
Maoz Tsur, winner of Shalshelet Int'l Jewish Music Festival
For Video, please see here or Got Hanukkah Page!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK9AFfz4wCY
Come, Break with Time is a madrigal for five voices, either soloists or choir. Compositional techniques; i.e. tension vs. relaxation, closed vs. open sounds, unisons vs. octaves, harmonic tension; textural intuitiveness (imitative versus homophonic); counterpoint; rhythm according to syntax vs. rhythmic motion; places for word painting (madrigal) and places for virtuosic technique, are all employed to describe Louise Bogan’s evocative text.
As women, how do we express ourselves in prayer?
Do we mimic our Biblical mothers, such as the joyous and courageous song of the prophetess Devorah? Or, do we express ourselves poetically, with Thanksgiving, as in Hannah’s prayer?
Do we address G-d personally, asking for specific womanly needs and longings, as did Fanny Neuda, the first Jewish woman to write a book of her own prayers in German? Or do we address G-d also communally, as did the eighteenth century Moroccan poet and Torah scholar, Freiha?
A young girl arises in the morning, and as she begins her morning prayers, she sees herself fully grown, thanking G-d for having made her a woman.
Illuminations, for orchestra, baritone solo and chorus, was premiered in Los Angeles in 1997. The first movement is a setting of the candle blessings with text by David Rosenberg. The second movement is an original Maoz Tsur. The Maoz Tsur chorus has became so popular, that it has been reworked several times for various concert requirements. Recently, the orchestral version of Maoz Tsur was also choreographed into a ballet by Louise Reichlin, LA Choreographers and Dancers!
SIM SHALOM/GRANT US PEACE
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Mezzo Soprano Soloist, SATB, String Orchestra
American Jewish Song Festival Finalist
Selected for American Cantors' Association
Exemplifying the joy inherent in the poetry of Sim Shalom, I wrote a swingy, catchy tune which was first performed, a capella, by the University of Toronto Singers (SATB), but has been sung internationally by various choruses and cantors a capella, with piano accompaniment, as well as with string orchestra (recording here).
KI LO NAEH/TO HIM IT IS FITTING
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Mezzo Soprano Soloist, SATB, String Orchestra
With text from the Passover Haggadah, Ki Lo Naeh was premiered in Toronto and then was commissioned to be arranged for string orchestra by the LA Jewish Symphony.
LA Jewish Symphony Commission
MAOZ TSUR/ROCK OF AGES
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SATB, String Orchestra
Taken from the second movement of my work, Illuminations, this Hanukkah poem is set to an original tune and has become so popular with many different arrangements as well choreographed into a ballet!
Winner, Shalshelet International Music Festival
LA Jewish Symphony Commission
PROPOSITION 6
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Flute(Piccolo), Bass Cl(Cl.), Bassoon, Horn, Violin, Cello
ASCAP Award, Foundation Grant to Young Composers
L'KHA DODI/COME, BY BELOVED
A klezmer-inspired L'Kha Dodi. Text is from the Friday night prayers.
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2 Tenors, SATB, Clarinet, Piano (drum optional)
Max Helfman Institute Commission
BLESSINGS FOR HANUKKAH
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Treble Choir, SATB, Chamber Ensemble
An arrangement of the traditional Hanukkah Blessings.
Other settings available.
PRAYER FOR PEACE
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Bar., SATB, Treble Choir, Larger Ensemble/Pno
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Treble Choir, Pno. (Vln. optional)
This piece of hope is set in both English and Hebrew. The words are from “Yehi ratzon milfanecha, Hashem Elokeinu, V’Elokei Avoteinu...Shetevatel Milchamot, Ushfichut Damim” May it be the will before you...to be rid of wars and bloodshed...a prayer for peace.
Max Helfman Institute Commission
THE KISS, A SHORT STORY. INSPIRATION: KLIMT
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Full Orchestra
Adonai Mah Adam for Solo Violin
Lord, What is Man? Based on Yizkor - Memorial Remembrance Prayer
Collaboration for Yom Hashoa with Artist
Doni Silver Simons
Premiered on JLTV:
A counterpoint of two ideas and two melodies. The first idea is one of questioning, sadness and memory. This melody embraces its own counterpoint. The second melody is one of optimism - as each day is renewed. When the initial melody returns, a half step lower, it becomes more powerful, more weighted. It has gained importance, but then the eerie harmonics arrive reminding us of a higher presence--of who we are addressing the question, "Lord, What is Man?"
Performance by Niv Ashkenazi.