LIGHT & GOLD

Five Hebrew Love Songs
In the spring of 1996, my great friend (and brilliant
violinist) Friedemann Eichhorn invited me and
my girlfriend-at-the-time Hila Plitmann (a
soprano) to give a concert with him in his home
city of Speyer, Germany. We had all met that year
as students at the Juilliard School, and were
inseparable.
Because we were appearing as a band of travelling
musicians, ‘Friedy’ asked me to write a set of
‘troubadour’ songs for piano, violin and soprano.
I asked Hila (who was born and raised in Jerusalem)
to write me a few ‘postcards’ in her native tongue,
and a few days later she presented me with these
exquisite and delicate Hebrew poems. I set them
while we vacationed in a small skiing village in the
Swiss Alps, and we performed them for the fi rst
time a week later in Speyer, Hila singing, Friedy
playing violin, and I at the piano.
Each of the songs captures a moment that Hila
and I shared together: “Kala Kalla” (which means
‘light bride’) was a pun I came up with while she
was fi rst teaching me Hebrew; the bells at the
beginning of “Eyze Sheleg” are the exact pitches
that awakened us each morning in Germany as
they rang from a nearby cathedral, and we really
did see the most astonishing snowfl akes falling
from the sky.
In 2001, the University of Miami commissioned
me to adapt the songs for SATB chorus and string
quartet, which is the version presented here. These
songs are profoundly personal for me, born entirely
out of my new love for this soprano, poet, and now
my beautiful wife, Hila Plitmann.
The Chelsea Carol
The Chelsea Carol was commissioned by the Choirs
of Birmingham-Southern College, Lester Seigel,
conductor, to commemorate the 75th anniversary
of the college’s Service of Lessons and Carols.
Original Latin text by my long-time collaborator
Charles Anthony Silvestri, scored for choir and
organ, it was fi rst printed in December 2012.
6 LIGHT & GOLD
A Boy and a Girl
(Composed 2002)
For me, writing music is a very lonely experience.
The process of wrestling the notes from my heart
to my brain to the page is usually a brutal one;
only rarely does it feel as glamorous as the word
“composing” sounds. I spend huge amounts of
time researching texts, and seek to fi nd words and
poems that, to me at least, have music hidden
with the words. “A Boy and a Girl” is such a tender,
delicate, exquisite poem; I simply tried to quiet
myself as much as possible, teasing out the music
that is contained within the words to create this
piece.
I’m often asked which of my compositions is my
favourite. I don’t really have one that I love more
than the others, but I do feel that the four measures
that musically paint the text “never kissing” may
be the truest notes I’ve ever written.
Cloudburst
After a performance of Go, Lovely Rose in 1991,
Dr. Jocelyn K. Jensen approached me about
writing a piece for her High School Choir. She is
an amazing conductor, legendary for doing crazy
things on stage (choralography, lighting, costumes,
you name it), and I wanted to write something for
her that would really knock the audience out.
I had recently been given an exquisite book of
poems by Octavio Paz, and around the same
time I witnessed an actual (breathtaking) desert
cloudburst, and I guess it just all lined up. The
fi nger snapping thing (all of the singers snap their
fi ngers to simulate rain) is an old campfi re game
that I modifi ed for the work, and the thunder sheets
were giant pieces of tin we took from the side of
the school.
The piece was originally about ten minutes long,
but Dr. Jo-Michael Scheibe sagely convinced me
to “tighten it up”. I did, and the piece (now a lean
eight and a half minutes) was fi nally published in
1995.