Shacharit (2020) שחרית
by Udi Perlman (b. 1990)

* World Premiere Recording *

| The Israeli Contemporary Music Project

Udi Perlman: Shacharit | Hagai Yodan, piano

Live recording from the premiere 28.08.2021 in Grieghallen, Bergen. 
BIT20 Ensemble and conductor Christian Karlsen.

Swiveling in a Flexible Unison (2021)

The Juilliard Orchestra
Robert Fleitz - Piano
Jeffrey Milarsky - Conductor

This piece is written in the memory of the French composer Henri Dutilleux who would have celebrated his 100th birthday at the time this piece was completed in January 2016. 

I started writing this piece in Paris in May 2013 when Dutilleux died aged 96. Dutilleux helped to shape and form my sound, taste and sense of aesthetics and for me was a symbol of French music. In deep morning I sketched the first few pages of this piece.  

In my first sketch there was no piano, and it was titled “Ascend”. Not long after I stopped working on this piece, I was too overtaken with grief, and I left Paris.  

About three years later, as his 100th birthday was nearing I decided to return to this piece and to add a piano.  

The piano for me represented the individual, a protagonist dealing with deep sorrow. A lonely voice in a world filled with voices.  

The strings start off the piece in a procession. The string writing of the first few pages is borrowing heavily from the baroque lamento, with a repeated pattern of notes that creates dissonances and resolutions and an ever descending bass.  

The piano has three main elements through-out this piece: 
*A three note motive (A-Bb-Db) which was taken from Dutilleux’s piece “The Shadows of Time”, a piece based on Anne Frank’s diary. In his piece, those three notes are sang by a child with the words “Pourquoi Nous?” – “Why us?”. 

The second element presented by the piano is a series of very quick disjunct patterns. Those patterns are supposed to represent murmuring, or crying in an onomatopoeia. 

The third and final major element is represented by thick chords played by the pianist who depict the church bells.  

As this piece is written about my grief, I thought that the Kübler-Ross model (better known as “The five stages of grief”) would be a suitable platform to shape the arc of the piece. The piece starts in Denial, goes through anger, bargaining, depression and finally concludes with acceptance.  


Seltenreich - Élégie (2016) for piano and string orchestra

'Dormientes Bestia' - 'sleeping beast'. This piece was written with the image of a mythological-esque, female/beast hybrid in mind, focusing on the passage of breath and air through the lungs of the performer and out through the instrument. It expresses femininity in an honest way - women can be scary and fierce, too. Wake her at your peril.

For great bass paetzold, and tape.

Dormientes Bestia

https://cassandramiller.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/bel-canto/

Bel Canto

Commissioned by Ensemble Kore with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts

Recipient of the 2011 Jules-Léger Prize for New Chamber Music (Canada’s highest honour for composition)

Marie-Annick Béliveau, mezzo-soprano
Geneviève Déraspe, alto flute
Xavier Brossard-Ménard, clarinet
Jonathan Barriault, guitar
John Corban, violin
Pemi Paull, viola
Yegor Dyachkov, cello

The piece is above all a portrait Maria Callas. It’s based on the opening statement (the opening sighs) of Puccini’s Vissi d’arte – Maria Callas’ live version of it, with all the full generosity of her vibrato, swoops and portamenti (all the things outside of notation). At the beginning, it’s as if we hear her young voice, and towards the end, the voice of her later years.

The path of the piece through time is not only about the ageing of an extraordinary woman, but also about the listener. Time slows down to allow for an engagement with detail, for a closeness or submersion in the sound, and possibly for clarity or meditative stillness.

Two simultaneous ensembles perform here without coordinating with each other. This makes for layers of melody, creating a sonic depth of field – echoing perhaps the depth of the Greek landscape in which I felt the warm revelation that originally inspired this piece. Moreover, to separate the ensemble into two smaller groups, without conductor, enables an intense chamber-listening between the players. This intimacy allows them to carry out with great musicality all of the non-notatable things I mentioned earlier – the swoops and vibrato, and all the unnamable subtleties of vocality.

Bel Canto

Bel Canto, Ensemble Kore with Marie-Annick Béliveau (2010)

Fugue

This piece was written for the Ligeti Quartet for their project at the Centre for New Music at Sheffield, supported by Arts Council England.


workshop recording

Samoyeds

«Paroxismos» (2019) [live performance]
mosaic on violence for chamber ensemble

Written for and performed by Sound Icon.
Commissioned by SCI/ASCAP

Audio editing, mixing and mastering: Felipe Tovar-Henao

March 29, 2019.
@ 2019 SCI National Conference
University of New México
Albuquerque, NM - USA

Official website: www.felipe-tovar-henao.com
Soundcloud: @felipetovarhenao
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/felipe.tovar.henao/

«Paroxismos» (2019) mosaic on violence for chamber ensemble

In recent years I noticed I was anchoring my identity in being “for” or “against” something. I realized I didn’t want to stay in that meaningless corner and felt a need to rebel, mostly against my own habits. “Birds” is the first single out from my album called “Meri” (out in September). This album is an exploration of Love as a form of rebellion. Stay safe <3

http://smarturl.it/omerbirds

Birds

the Sea They Think They Hear
for soprano, flute, harp, piano, violin, viola and violoncello | 2021

Written for and performed by the Wet Ink Ensemble and Gelsey Bell
Recorded at Scholes Street Studio
Mix and Mastering by Murat Çolak

Text

The ocean, deep blue-green.
What we learn in the middle of the night is that the world makes us flinch. (Michel Serres, The Five Senses: Philosophy of Mingled Bodies)
Sounds an ocean, drinks it in.

Then everything became worse for the wear, damaged, used and used-up and ultimately destroyed.
More and more I made up for what was lost, I slowly improved myself, and I considered myself healed. (Ingeborg Bachmann, Malina)

I found myself trapped in a nightmare, standing alone at the sea. Everyday becoming more and more.
White and yellow and gray and horizonless. (Tove Jansson, The Summer Book)

the Sea They Think They Hear (2021)

https://www.stefanogervasoni.net/index.asp?page=catalogue&id=129

for: large ensemble
detailed instrumentation: flute (also G-flute), oboe (also English horn), clarinet in B flat (also bass clarinet), bassoon (also contrabassoon), horn in F, trumpet in B flat (also piccolo trumpet in B flat), trombone, percussion I, percussion II, harp, piano (also celesta - five octaves), violin I, violin II, viola, violoncello, double-bass (five strings)
duration: 21'
commission: Ensemble InterContemporain
first performance: 4.9.20, Paris, La Scala, Ensemble InterContemporain, Matthias Pintscher (conductor)
publisher: Edizioni Suvini Zerboni
catalogue number: S. 16215 Z.

Eufaunique - 1st and 2nd part - Ensemble InterContemporain, M. Pintscher -  live. Paris 3.9.20

Native of Israel, Seltenreich has been performed by some of the world’s leading orchestras and ensembles, among them The Tokyo Philharmonic, The Israel Philharmonic, The Israeli Opera, and the Talea Ensemble. 
He has recently been commission by the Messiaen Festival in France, he has been offered a fellowship to the Aspen Music Festival (2016), and was invited to the soundSCAPE Music Festival in Italy (2016). Seltenreich was selected as an Associate Artist at Atlantic Center for the Arts’ residency with Georg Friedrich Haas (2016).  Seltenreich is the recipient of several domestic and international awards and is the youngest composer ever to be awarded the 1st prize in the Salvatore Martirano Composition Competition. Other distinctions include the Arthur Friedman prize for “an outstanding orchestral work” (2015) and the Frank Robert Abell Young Composer Competition for New Chamber Music (2015).
Seltenreich completed his Bachelor’s degree in music composition at Tel-Aviv University; and his Master’s degree at The Juilliard School in New York city under the direction of Matthias Pintscher.


Seltenreich - Élégie (2016) for piano and string orchestra

Michael Seltenreich - Composer