Artistic Statement

My music encompasses a variety of genres: orchestral, chamber, vocal, theatrical and electro-acoustic. I am a Jerusalem-based composer whose music incorporates a blend of dissonant, conflicting and restless voices and moods. Ambiguous dramatic situations in my work find their expression in different combinations of sound that fluctuate between normalcy and insanity. Melodies, harmonies, and timbre contain an explosive energy, perpetually moving toward disintegration and transformation.

The journey to attaining this fragile and elusive quality manifests itself in many of my pieces.  These include my early orchestral piece “Breakinoise” (“Raashavir”); “Dibs,” inspired by Virginia Axline’s book by the same name; vocal compositions set to poems by Marina Tsvetaeva and Iranian poet Friva Shush-belockee; as well as my orchestral composition “The Pillar of the Essence,” inspired by a famous poem (“The Central Pillar”) by Dalia Ravikovitch.

Many of the texts from which I draw inspiration were written by women. They often depict a vivacious, glamorous, passionate existence that longs to burst forward, tearing apart external and internal boundaries alike.

A chamber opera I composed, “ASD”, describes the gap between the autistic inner world of a child and the world inhabited by his parents. Both dramatically and musically, the opera deals with the attempt to bridge between starkly different, disconnected worlds transfused with an immense love for each other, forever seeking to touch, find warmth, and connect against all odds.

This tension between warm, bubbling emotion and strict confines is both conjured in the music and determines its course. In exploring this tension, I create complex soundscapes, utilizing extended techniques and combining “noise,” rich harmonies, and wide-ranging melodies. These are counter-balanced by rigid structures that often fall apart, collapsing from within.

My music also incorporates popular local materials, often making use of explicit or implicit quotations to create new layers of affect.