Ode to Jerusalem

This festive overture was written for the season opening of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, at the request of its incoming music director, the conductor Steven Sloan, to mark the celebratory occasion — the opening of the season and the maestro's first concert in his new role. The work presents the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in full splendour — large, colourful and virtuosic — and highlights what is distinctive about a Jerusalem symphony orchestra as it is perceived by a composer who grew up in Jerusalem: it is easy to recognise in it the mixture that characterises the city, between the sonorities and rhythms of the Western — and even American — classical world and local Israeli culture. Its title also hints at the religious associations of the city.

This kind of festive, fanfare-like writing is, in truth, far from me — even, in a sense, my opposite: my music is usually dramatic and weighty, or else light and joyful and minimal, or quiet but sad, and rarely celebratory. It was precisely for that reason that I took on the challenge — to find in myself new regions I had known less well; and I certainly also listened to the music of John Williams to enter the idiom. The piece takes a single theme and presents it in two faces, Western and Eastern — much as the city of Jerusalem has two faces, or perhaps more. At the opening one hears the festive brass and the trumpets, and as the piece continues the theme is transformed and passes to the strings in a more Middle-Eastern guise, all of it carried throughout by a festive groove and rhythmic drive.

Commissioned by Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, at the request of incoming conductor and music director Steven Sloan.

Premiere: Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Steven Sloan.

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