Shu Hai

This orchestral piece takes the second movement of the piece Shu Hai mitamen behatalat kidon (Shu Hai practices Javelin) and builds a dialogue between two pieces. The very fragile, intimate and reduced poetic fabric of the original “Shu hai” second movement, and a very raw crude unruly and grotesque bouts of the orchestral piece are confronting each other. Where the vocal piece is the crystallized poetry which comes after an experience is a memory, the orchestra piece is the earth from which the experience emerges. The pieces are juxtaposed at first, and then the orchestral piece begins to cut into the vocal piece and in the end the live singer leaves the original vocal piece and joins with the orchestral Shu. However, integration is not the end point of this confrontation between the pieces, on the contrary- the distance between them seems to grow as time goes on.

The live electronics of this piece pertain only to the singer and the recorded voices of the original vocal piece, and are note applied at all to the orchestra. The orchestra sounds natural, it is treated like a very wild solo voice, seen through a microscope a voice of magnified and slowed down huge gesture, huge bodily justures like pressing, lifting a heavy weight, trying to move a very large object and the friction created when it moves in bouts. The voice of the singer comes from six loud speakers around the room plus one in the center of the room and introduces the multiple voices within the singular soloist’s voice in different formations (as if the voice was actually on orchestra). This enhances the concept of the piece being actually two opposing pieces in dialogue, since even the hall becomes two different halls: a surround sound for the vocal piece and a regular concert hall for the orchestra. The piece is dedicated to Dieter Schnebel. – Chaya Czernowin