Updates
Premieres, performances, commissions, releases and residencies.
Returning as guest faculty to the Berlin Transatlantic Composers Workshop, held from 29 June to 5 July, with a lecture titled I vs AI on the composer's place in the age of artificial intelligence.
The workshop again closes with premieres by the participating composers, performed by the BAAM Ensemble under Garrett Keast.
Getting Closer, for oboe and electric guitar, performed by Libby Van Cleve and Trevor Babb at the Connecticut College Music Department's Spring Faculty Showcase.
Guest faculty at the Berlin Transatlantic Composers Workshop, an international composition course held from 7 to 12 July, with premieres by the participating composers performed by the BAAM Ensemble under Garrett Keast.
An evening of improvisation at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Berlin, on 20 March, in homage to Keith Jarrett — held alongside the Berlinale screening of Ido Fluk's Köln 75, which tells the story of Jarrett's concert at the Cologne Opera House.
An evening of solo piano at ausland, Berlin, on 27 September, shared with the composer and pianist Filippos Raskovic — composed, improvised and performed. My set is Bianca Piana; Raskovic plays improvisations marking his release Understone.
Supported by Initiative Musik through the Live 500 programme.
Landscape in Fume, for orchestra, is now available on Bandcamp.
The live recording of {Not} Letting Go is now available on Bandcamp.
Idit Shner, saxophone · Hal Grossman and Hannah Willard, violins · Arnaud Ghillebaert, viola · Victoria Wolff, cello · Tyler Abbott, bass. Recorded by David Larsen; sound engineering and mix by Paul K Ward.
Mirror I, an album of eleven pieces for solo piano, is now available on Bandcamp: Puzzlement, Choral, Small Steps, Dripping, Awaiting, Cyclic Thoughts, Promises, in A, So You Think, Sunrise and Prayer.
Landscape in Fume receives its German premiere on 18 May at the Konzerthaus Berlin, in the Werner-Otto-Saal, performed by the Berlin Academy of American Music under Garrett Keast. The work is dedicated to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and to the memory of my grandfather and his family.
The concert, Memories & Messages for a Modern World, also includes European premieres of works by David T. Little and David Lang, Ursula Mamlok's Fünf Phantasiestücke, and the German premiere of Avner Dorman's second violin concerto Nigunim, with Guy Braunstein.
Idit Shner gives the world premiere of {Not} Letting Go, a concerto for improvising saxophone and strings, on 16 March at the Biennial Conference of the North American Saxophone Alliance in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where it is presented as a new concerto for a multi-genre saxophonist.
On 29 October, Present Music perform at the Milwaukee Art Museum as part of the Die Stadt ohne Juden / The City Without Jews project — a screening of Hans Karl Breslauer's 1924 Austrian silent film, long thought lost, with Olga Neuwirth's score played live by the ensemble under Yaniv Dinur.
The evening also includes my arrangement for Present Music of Gonna Get Through This World, by Woody Guthrie and Lisa Gutkin, sung by Donna Woodall.
The second movement of String Quartet No. 1 is available on Bandcamp.
After repeated cancellations through the Covid years, the thirty-minute song cycle Sooner & Later returns to the stage with the Israel Chamber Orchestra, with Tom Cohen as soloist.
The MINORITY show was performed with my band at the Israeli Music Showcase Festival, which closed with a networking day. Further performances are planned in Israel and abroad; videos from the show are being edited.
The Dior Quartet reached the finals of the Banff International String Quartet Competition, performing Black Widow. The event was streamed live by Banff.
Drift was written in 2021 for flute and guitar, and later rearranged for saxophone and harp at the request of Noam Dorembus and Ada Ragimov, for their duo tour.
Detachment, written this year, is premiered by the Sirens Ensemble at the Israeli Music Festival.
Neon Lights, written for my jazz-fusion ensemble Turquoise Project and drawing on short quotations from Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, is performed by Present Music on 11 June in their season finale Neon Life, conducted by David Bloom.
The concert is filmed at the Turner Hall Ballroom, Milwaukee, and presented on Present Music's digital stage, in a programme alongside works by David Lang, Louis Andriessen, Daniel Kidane, Tansy Davies and Henry Threadgill.
MINORITY — a mix of indie-pop songs and string pieces — is now available on all streaming platforms, and to hear and purchase on Bandcamp.
The first single and video from the forthcoming album MINORITY is now available on YouTube and on all streaming platforms.
A sold-out evening at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, with the San Francisco Girls Chorus and Berkeley Ballet, with guest appearances by The Living Earth Show and the Amaranth Quartet.
With thanks to Valerie, Robert, the choristers, Andy, the Israel Institute, and everyone who made the production possible. The video of my piece Belong Not can be watched here.
The San Francisco Girls Chorus presents a fully staged co-production of choral music and dance, with thirty dancers and forty choristers. My work Belong Not is programmed alongside works by five other composers, among them Steve Reich and Meredith Monk.
First performance at the Center for New Music, San Francisco, of Silences Trio, for clarinet, viola and piano, given by Slow Wave Trio.
Quartetto di Cremona give the North American premiere of Hidden Place at The Wallis, Beverly Hills.
Two orchestral premieres follow next month: Ode to Jerusalem, for the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and the song cycle Sooner & Later, for the Israel Chamber Orchestra.
Details for Ode to Jerusalem and for Sooner & Later.
A collaboration with Sacha Terrat, a musician from New Caledonia, arranging and performing one of his songs. Concert at the Cité des Arts auditorium, 18 rue de l'Hôtel de Ville, Paris.
Following a concert of sixteen performers and eleven pieces by my composition students, the next project begins: a six-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.
Recordings from the student concert will appear in the teaching section of this site.
An Asian debut at the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Cannot Go Back, arranged and rewritten for string quintet for the occasion, was performed by Quartetto di Cremona with Dimitri Hoffmann.
A residency at the University of California, Berkeley: talks on music, teaching, and above all the writing of new work — for the Magnes Museum and for the San Francisco Girls Chorus.
Pictured: a class given with Professor Francesco Spagnolo at the Magnes Museum. With thanks to the Israel Institute and to Francesco Spagnolo for making the residency possible.
A sold-out concert at Stockholm Konserthuset, where the new string quartet Hidden Place received its premiere. The performance was warmly received by audience and critics alike.
The review is in the press section.
A new programme of fusion works for brass and rhythm section, at times with voice, written, performed and produced for the Israeli Music Festival, and premiered at the Elma Arts Complex, Zichron Ya'akov.
Videos and recordings to follow.
Rehearsals in Italy with the Quartetto di Cremona on a new piece, for a concert in Stockholm. Further details to be announced.
The Hashtag Ensemble presents a summer series of concerts in unexpected venues throughout August, including Phantom of the Fugue.
A broadcast on Voice of Music, with music and an interview in Hebrew by Uri Golomb.
Michael Guttman, Jing Zhao and Nadia Okrusko rehearse the piano trio at the residence of the French ambassador in Copenhagen.
The Copenhagen Festival, Denmark, has programmed my piano trio as part of its chamber music concert on 5 June 2018, performed by Michael Guttman, Jing Zhao and Nadia Okrusko.
The Montevideo Philharmonic Orchestra marks its sixtieth anniversary, and seventy years of the State of Israel, with a concert of works by Gershwin, Bernstein, Prokofiev, Ben-Haim and my flute concerto — performed by Noam Buchman, who gave its premiere, under the orchestra's music director, Ligia Amadio.
28 April, Teatro Solís, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Every concert of the festival sold out. My piano trio was performed by Michael Guttman, Jing Zhao and Kathleen Tagg, and Phantom of the Fugue by the Hashtag Ensemble. Martha Argerich's participation marked the occasion.
With thanks to the conductor, the soloist and the orchestra. The recording is being edited and will appear on this site shortly.
We are all soloists in the concerti of our own lives, and music is their abstract mirror.
After months of work, rehearsals begin. Ligia Amadio and the flautist Noam Buchman are working on the score. The premiere is on 15 November at the Jerusalem Theatre.
The Kronos Quartet have reissued the album of the four pieces commissioned for their Under 30 Project, a worldwide competition for composers under the age of thirty. As the fourth recipient I wrote Widows & Lovers, a complex piece involving live electronics.
The album is now available to purchase online — until now it could be bought only in the United States. The three movements differ considerably from one another; I will write about them separately.
Six pieces for string quartet, part of the forthcoming album, have been recorded this week.
The players brought uncompromising professionalism and wide experience across genres, and we understood one another from the first reading — which does not always happen, and is rewarding when it does. Videos to follow.