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. 

This is not a march (2012) performed by Cynthia Johnston Turner and the Cornell Wind Ensemble

Amit Gilutz