after Draft of a Reparation Agreement by Dan Pagis PROGRAM NOTE Some three years ago, on Yom Ha’Shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), an acquaintance sent by e-mail two poems by the late Israeli poet Dan Pagis, who was a Holocaust survivor, in the original Hebrew as well as a very fine translation into English by Stephen…
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PROGRAM NOTE UNDER THE SUN’S GAZE as a title for a musical composition conjures up many possibilities. It is, in fact, an imagined line from an unwritten poem, invented with the idea of capturing something of the visual aura the sounds and energy of this work invoke in its composer’ mind. An omnipotent presence in…
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PROGRAM NOTE When Bruce Weinberger, tenor saxophonist with the Rascher Saxophone Quartet, first approached me in the spring of 2009 with an invitation to compose a work for the Rascher together with Paul Hillier’s Ars Nova Copenhagen, I was thrilled at the prospect of writing for a group of such stellar musicians — some of…
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PROGRAM NOTE The title Fault Line is a metaphor for the volatility of human existence. Underneath even the most seemingly orderly of lives, fault lines lie, at times totally invisible on the surface, yet capable of erupting with the power to shutter and change all. Fault Line may be heard as a journey of a…
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At the beginning there is the blank page, the start of a compositional journey into the unknown. My first step as composer is to ask myself what are some of the “givens” to be confronted, often pre-determined by the artist or group for whom the work is intended, and what are some parameters—you can call…
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