Concerto for flute and prepared string orchestra, with audience participation, by Amit Gilutz and Roy Amotz. Commissioned by the Adele and John Gray Endowment Fund.  

Performed by Roy Amotz and the Tel Aviv Soloists conducted by Barak Tal. 

program notes: 

When we started our collaboration on this piece we discovered that by chance we both had a copy of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine on our desks, waiting to be read. Drawing bold connections between major local and global crises in the last 40 years, the book explains the concept of “ ‘the shock doctrine’: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks - wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters - to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy.” (from http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine). Reading it over the summer proved to be a significant experience for both of us and we decided to try and convey something from that experience in the piece. 

The title of the piece is taken from the fourth section of the book, entitled “Lost in Translation: While We Wept, While We Trembled, While We Danced”. Many of the piece’s musical elements were conceived so as to portray one of these three images: weeping, trembling, dancing, and the piece itself is divided into these three sections, albeit in a different order: While We Trembled, While We Danced, While We Wept. All of the string instruments in the orchestra are prepared: different objects are placed on the strings to create other sonorities than the ones normally produced. This way, a rich sonic vocabulary is achieved which at times may bring to mind the mechanical noises of bulldozers at a construction site, and at times a frozen industrial wasteland. The flute part too is mostly based on “multiphonics”, the simultaneous playing of several pitches together in a non-harmonic spectrum, corresponding to the sounds coming out of the prepared strings of the orchestra. These sounds are unstable by nature and may bring to mind the ‘trembling’ from the piece’s subtitle. The sounds of the ‘bulldozers’ are lurking in the background and sometimes emerge to the surface. This, together with the instability by default of the multiphonic sounds is in correlation to the world described in the book, where our lives are influenced by hidden major forces and structures, and only the awareness of the individual could expose them and enable us to see the reality more fully and possibly change it. The trembling sounds goes through various processes and at the piece’s climax sound becomes speech. This process symbolizes for us the path we went through while reading the book - from a state of unconsciousness to a state of realization - where the system or structure that are hidden behind the phenomenons are suddenly clear. Only this state of consciousness can lead to a change. 

The role of the soloist includes parts which are only partially notated and leave room for improvisation. Thus the collaboration continues into the live performance itself, and the soloist can build musical processes relating to the moment of playing and the interaction with the audience and other musicians of stage. 

At the heart of Naomi Klein’s project, as in any struggle for social justice and equality, is a fundamental optimism and a belief in the possibility of change. At the piece’s climax the audience members too are invited to participate in the performance by simultaneously reading out loud texts from Klein’s book which were handed out together with the evening’s program. This chaotic choir of individual voices blurs the distinction between audience and performers in the context of the concert hall, and symbolically is also a moment of collective revelation and change of heart. This idea carries to the end of the piece, at which point the conductor and soloist leave their traditional roles and join the string players of the orchestra.

While We Danced

Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson, bass clarinet
Amit Gilutz, prepared piano and electronics

The Miscellaneous Romance Project is a modular set of pieces based on 'missed connections' ads on craigslist and other online dating websites. Ideally, for each performance the music and text are adapted to engage and perhaps reflect something about the locality in which it is performed. 

Miscellaneous Romance no.2, for bass clarinet, prepared piano and electronics, was written for a performance by the Platypus Ensemble in Vienna, Austria. Different sonic layers are interwoven in the electronic part, as texts are drawn not only from Viennese cyberspace, but also from German Romantic love poetry, that were set to music by the quintessential Viennese composer, Franz Schubert. As in Miscellaneous Romance no.1, these texts are generated as sound files using text-to-speech software. In addition to these two textual sources which are separated sonically in different ways, a quivering choir of voices comes in every once in a while repeating a mantra which at first is indiscernible, and gradually becomes more clear: 

Ich vermisse dich, mein Schwan.
Ich vermisse dich, mein Schwan.
Ich vermisse dich, mein Schwan.

German for “I miss you, my swan”, a mysterious haiku-like yearning that someone posted on Vienna’s Craigslist. 

From Schubert’s Schwangesang, the famous and popular Serenade is sampled and it too makes several distorted appearances until it is fully reveled towards the end of the piece, only to transform and unite with the flicker of other texts.

The piece is dedicated to Kevin Ernste.

Miscellaneous Romance no.2 (Vienna)

Trapped Bee With Chopin In Background

cool music created unintentionally while manipulating an Edith Piaf recording (no other materials used other than that recording). 

happy accident

Performed by Donatienne Michel-Dansac, Lionel Peintre, Richard Dubelski and Amit Gilutz, ManiFeste-Académie-2014

*********************************************************
Miscellaneous Romance is a modular project based on 'missed connections' ads from online dating websites. These texts are curated and fed to text-to-speech software, generating sound-files which form the base of the piece’s tape part. Live performers on stage interact with these tracks through rules laid out in the score. Each new version keeps this general conception while the music and texts are adapted to reflect the locality in which they are performed. Miscellaneous Romance no.1, is scored for bass clarinet, prepared violin, prepared piano and electronics, and was premiered by Talea Ensemble in 2012 in Ithaca, New York, and subsequently performed by the Argento Ensemble, as well as recorded by improvising artists Annie Lewandowsky and the Cornell Avant-garde Ensemble (CAGE). Miscellaneous Romance no.2, for bass clarinet, prepared piano and electronics, was written for a performance by the Platypus Ensemble in Vienna, Austria. 

Miscellaneous Romance no.3 was written for Donatienne Michel-Dansac, Lionel Peintre and Richard Dubelski for IRCAM’s 2014 ManiFeste-Académie. As a musical source material it makes use of a quintessential parisian love song, Edith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose. The percussion part as well as the singers’ improvisations are all based on this song, a part of which also appears in the tape part towards the end of the piece. All the texts used in the piece were collected on Paris’s cyberspace on websites such as craigslist, except the text for the chanson, which appears in a distorted form achieved through repeated automated translation on google’s translator. 

The piece was created with the support of a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship. 


Miscellaneous Romance no.3 (Paris)

The Cat Saved My Life
A musical reading in the poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch
For voice and six instruments
Performed by Meitar Ensemble with Ayelet Amots Avramson
*******************************************************

TEXTS:

Human Qualities:

Nothing human is foreign to me
But neither is it very close 
It's a continuous cycle: people perish in one day
I have no interest in that

Imagination is a Measureless Thing:

A man of thirty is nothing like a baby.
He's ceased expecting miracles and won't be lured by rustles.
He won't go out of his way even after sunset
When the magnificent sea darkens and hides the sharks.

Bird’s Call at Noon:

This chirping 
Is certainly not evil.
They sing without thinking about us.
Their hearts are not heavy
Even while pecking at a worm
This chirping is completely free of malice.
Over the years it seems
Even
To have a note of compassion.   

A Mother is Walking:

Mom's walking around with a dead child in her belly
This child hasn't been born yet
When the day comes the dead child will be born
And he won't utter his first scream
He won't be like a living child
And his mother won't worry about his future
And won't ask herself if she has enough milk
He will not be like a living child
This was the story of the child who was killed in his mother's belly,
In January 1988
For security reasons.

Stones:

Why are you standing here, kid?
Why did you throw stones?
What's wrong with you, throwing stones at soldiers?
Why are you not worried, anxious about your future?
Between one arrest and another
They've got their whole lives ahead of them,
Stones, stones, stones, stones
Kids, kids, kids, kids.
Go back home kids,
How can you live without peace? 

You don’t kill a baby twice:

And the children were already laid in the puddles of filth, 
Their mouths gaping
Carefree.
No one will harm them.
You don't kill a baby twice.

Our sweet soldiers,
Sought nothing for themselves,
So strong was their desire
To go back home in peace. 

Rina Slavin:

Rina Slavin lies in bed all day long
Next to her are pen and paper
Three cups with coffee dregs
And two deodorants, for variety.
Maybe she's paralyzed 
Maybe she's lazy
Or, in higher terms,
Phlegmatic.
A small alarm clock also sits next to her bed.
There's no way she can still  
Divide and part the time
Into hours
Because she has no time
In the ordinary sense of the word.
Rina Slavin waves a muscleless hand
To get rid of an ant or a hair.
She wildly hopes
To get out of bed and stir up great things
Or simply stir. 

Tirza and the Big World:

I will soon go
To live among other peoples
Among the strangers I will chuckle
I will teach the kangaroo 
Hebrew, Bible and Math.
Please tell the strangers 
I will soon arrive.
If you can't give me an ocean
Give me snow-covered mountains 

Surely, You Remember:

Writing poems is perhaps a pleasant thing
Poems written by others I like better.
You sit in the room and all the walls grow taller
A blue scarf becomes deep as a well  

9 songs from The Cat Saved My Life (2008-2009)

for piano quartet with music boxes and electronics

Performed by Ariana Kim (violin), Guy Ben-Ziony (viola), Elizabeth Lyon (cello), Xak Bjerken (piano) and Amit Gilutz (electronics). 

I was payed 1,500 Euros for writing this piece. The great canonical (and best selling) composer, marking for so many the most influential tendencies in western music, makes a guest appearance, It was engraved on a macbook pro ($1,500); I ordered my macbook online and it was shipped to my door; I don’t know if it was tracked down and bugged-up by the NSA or not (I’m probably not that important). O FREUNDE, in the form of music boxes looping easy-to-digest, saccharin versions of some of his most popular tunes. I used a violin which was ordered on eBay (30 EU) as well as a cello ordered on Amazon (230 EU); Amazon is currently being criticized for it’s labour-camp-like conditions of employment NICHT DIESE I also purchased four music boxes (7,90 EU each) I bought the music boxes during a visit to a Beethovenhaus in Vienna (a city which boasts many such relic-tourism opportunities). Since I don’t have a piano at home I rented a studio (5 euros per hour). These “Beethoven souvenirs” form the first of two sets of objects used in the piece, and the base for most of its musical material.  I recorded my working sessions on an iPhone ($200). The Chinese factory where most iPhones reach final assembly employs 230,000 workers. TÖNE! On the other end of the consumption cycle, street cleaning trucks navigating urban concrete jungles, leaving behind traces in the form of thin metal wires - “...We worked non-stop from midnight to the next morning 6 a.m... no one is allowed to stop... Each line can produce 36,000 iPhone 5... in half a day.” SONDERN LAßT UNS these form the second set of objects used in the piece. Tickets for this concert will have been sold for 15-52 Euros (full price). ANGENEHMERE For the premiere I will probably be wearing a light jacket ($50 on sale), which was most likely sowed in dangerous, slave-like conditions in Bangladesh or elsewhere ANSTIMMEN UND The cyclic motion of the music boxes also comes to play in the form of the piece, which seems to occasionally revisit its starting point… FREUDENVOLLERE The wheels are turning. This endless cycle, these wheels of emptiness -- The spring is set. trying to fill something up -- The tune can begin again. trying to feel something -- FREUDE! FREUDE!


Beethoven Souvenirs

A group of about 25 demonstrators in solidarity with the Kurdish people went on the U-Bahn line 6 going from Friedrichstraße to Leopoldplatz. 

Sound Demonstration, Berlin U-Bahn, 0ct 8th 2014

1, this useless tool, this folded flower
created and performed by Enrico D. Wey II enricowey.com 
music by amit gilutz
text performed by joby earle
image c manuel moncayo

1, this useless tool, this folded flower, Act II (music for dance)

I spent parts of my childhood growing up at a military base in Israel, one of the most militarized countries in the world today. I would often go with my family to military ceremonies and parades, and this was where I would encounter, along with the roar of jet planes showing off their tricks for the audience, the marching band playing its repertoire of marches and songs. These childhood memories are perceived as happy and careless (if I had any worries back then they didn't make it to the present). I especially liked when the "Hercules" - an American transport plane which back then was probably the largest vehicle I'd ever seen - would land in close proximity to the audience and give birth to a tank or two before taking off again in deafening noise, with spectacular flames coming out of its jets.
When I look back at these memories today I feel deceived. The maternal Hercules jet was manufactured by one of the world's largest weapon dealers. I was participating in what now I think of as a ritual of adoration of technology and power, for which the music of the military band was another ornament, an aural candy. In my piece I am exploring the gap between the sterile representation of wars and technology in mainstream media and culture and the realities of those conflicts: the destroyed homes, the torn flesh.

I went back to the official march of the Israeli military and electronically stretched and manipulated it, trying to symbolically reveal a certain truth or information it held and which was hidden. It became an austere and dysfunctional slow piece of music, perhaps a funeral march which I then transcribed for the ensemble. The original recording of the March is played through speakers towards the end of the piece, but it is framed within the larger piece in a way which is alienating and distancing. The players do not participate in the playing of the March. this is not a march is an attempt to refract the relationship of the wind ensemble and its militaristic history. 

Amit Gilutz

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