“Deep in the blue” for soprano & chamber Orchestra, 1967.
This piece was written in a summer composer conference in Pennington College, Vermont.
I wrote 6 short pieces, one of them completely graphic, (an influence of N.Y. free spirit and John Cage way of writing) but only 2 pieces were recorded and broadcasted in the U.S. I enclose the graphic page for a piece called SYNAESTHESIA as a homage to Alfred Bester book "The stars, my destination" which describesthis psychedelic phenomena. For the 2 recorded pieces I had a great soprano: International singer and performer Antonia Lavane
Yossi Mar Chaim
Performances
"LOOP BARIBUA", 2012, THE PITKIT CLUB
Most of these videos were recorded in the ZIMMER CLUB during the years 2009-2020. This venue , its audience and its founder, video artist Ron Kazir, were dedicated to all kinds of noise, including special workshops, hosting foreign artists and non stop recording. My son, Guido, was the producer and editor of most works (including building and maintaining this web site). LOOP BARIBUA is a complicated job, utilizing 6 tape recorders, 4 loops and a record player that, beside playing a record, ran a tape loop with double speed. Some of the tapes had their own speakers. The different loops created a square (in Hebrew-Ribua).
Loop Baribua
KOREAN TEST
following a visit to South Korea in 2016 where I recorded rituals and ethnic music, we added more public stuff (like children singing ) and found a way to run a loop through an electric bass, which responded when the slicing points touched the strings.
Korean Test
"LOOP GESHEFT" (2017)
The name is a distortion of a Yiddish expression (like monkey business) but it has nothing to do with the work which is a big collage (prepared by guido) of the first 20 seconds of many pop and rock songs. I start with a mini piano + vocal solo to prepare the right atmosphere and then the big stars come in.
Loop Gesheft
"LEAVES SHREDER", 2012
My idea was to hear tape sounds thru the leaves shredder. In order to produce the real sounds we "fed" The shreder with a pre-prepared tape which ran into it. The tape was shredded and fell to the floor, and was pushed back into the machine ,making horrible sounds. We ran a video which included destroying a wall and trampoline jumps which I recorded in the city of Yalta.
Leaves Shreder
Organ and cassettes (2014)
Unlike the other videos this was recorded in Jerusalem during the opening night of HAMAZKEKA, an important
Music and sound club. We were one of 5 duos to celebrate the premier.
It is almost impossible to cut long loops on the fragile mechanics of a cassette recorder, but we used machines with oyster shape closure so the loop can run better. Guido made 4 loops: two of them played synchronized pop songs: "Big Bad Joe" and "Raunchy" and I answered with an old Casio organ.
Organ & Cassettes Duet
Impro Eran Sachs with Alex Drool (2010)
Sachs and drool are great musicians, improvisers and dominant personalities in the Israeli noise scene (and also very funny).. I met them in the first days of the ZIMMER (2008) and performed with them. Naturally, on my 70th birthday celebration in "Hateiva" they were the last performers ( with Ayelet Lerman and me).
Impro with Alex Drool & Eran Sachs
THE GREAT DRYER SHOW (2015)
For that piece we collected noisy bathroom appliances : fans, electrical toothbrushes, shavers ,etc… and had a lot of fun with them, including audience participation. A composer friend told me how much he loved playing pieces in which he could decide - 1 or 0 only.
The Great Dryers Show
FEATURING (2015)
A zimmer project with the municipal culture department: A live internet broadcasting into the city hall. It was not simple in the pre-zoom period.
We decided to use only instruments that we built. Shmil Frankel, a musician and instrument builder used a home heater and a knife. , Ariel - musician and club owner built the Sound Monster, and I prepared - with all kinds of rubber, strings, masking tape and such - a prepared piano with no keys. this was an enlargement of the zimmer "no instruments" twice-a-year festival in which only home made instruments were allowed.
Featuring
Really, you shouldn't have… (or - a lesson in polish)
A nursery polish song brought to Israel and translated many years ago was a stimulant for this work which is a weird polish lesson. We hear and see the song in both languages + old comic clips from the 30's. 3 famous entertainers disguise as 3 polish ladies in a weekly program 20 years ego, and many other inside jokes…
Really, you shouldn't have...
DO THE TAAWAGI (2018)
In this part of the Zimmer tapes festivals, we did a paraphrase on a forgotten song to which there is no official recording - only a cassette from a party which we found after a long search. the group that preformed it was called Navadey Haukaf (The Saddle Nomads). they recorded a lot during the years 2003-2007 (mostly political rude post punk) but had no official products. We made some loops and added piano and voice (with the help of my grand daughter, Alma).
Do The Ta'awagi
THE MILK FROTHIES (2017)
In the line of kitchen ware "no instruments" festivals we did electric drills, carrot graters, dryers - but I love the milk frothies best of all. The main reason, beside bubbling noise, is what a flamenco guitar player can do with a milk frother touching the strings and achieving incredible speed touch. Shmil Frankel was the guitar (and home flute) player and we just accompanied him all the way.
The Milk frothies
MEDEA (1993) - That year I tried, with actress Yafa Mor, to produce chamber version of MEDEA MATERIALS by German playwright HEINER MILLER. we did not make it but we used a budget donated for live theatre music to show some of our work. Some great theater composers contributed to that evening - Dory Parness, Eldad Lidor, Dan Handelsman and others. Our production included ethnic music (stating with a wedding song from Morocco) and Yafa left the stage , playing the Didgeridoo.
Medea
CLOCKS (2019) - My son, his daughter and myself called ourselves TLATOPHONE for the zimmer festivals and our theme was "CLOCKS from every kind; starting wiyh our wake up radio clocks and adding by video huge towers from Tokyo ,Vienna ,London with many moving manikins on the hour. We added fake drama between Father and Daughter when the later hid in a cupboard and "disobeying" the script - caused a breaking of a cellphone. we had to convince the audience that it was a only a game
CLOCKS
TAPE, TURNTABLE, TABLET AND VIDEO (2013)
This was a prelude for the" Last Mohicans" (Arik Shapira and myself) concert with the MEITAR ensemble. The playing was improvised, the loop and turntable were prepared beforehand.
Tape, Turntable, Tablet & Video
DRILLS: This strange piece was created when an electrician who did a job in my house asked by phone if I have a hammer drill. To make sure that I have one he asked me to put it on so he can hear it. Listening to the drill I got the idea of a team of drill players, each one sounding different. Shmil, my son and myself had four drills altogether and we found an old carpenter bench sitting in the Zimmer club courtyard. So this was our base for the drill maneuvers and that one of our performances
sound wise. Shmil ,who builds a lot of instruments took the bench home, later.
DRILLS
A Piano with Teeth
A Piano with teeth:
In 2017 the Zimmer club received a gift: an old upright piano that by all evidence could not be properly tuned anymore. I loved it and played on it on every occasion. But an upright piano is very difficult if you want to play inside. Playing inside was created for grand pianos. Slowly came the idea to make him lie on the floor, literally on its back. this position allowed for two players to sit on the floor opposite each other and see exactly what each one does. I asked my old partner SHMILL FRENKEL who can play on anything and he brought a lot of ideas about soft materials like wool or raffia that will be put and played between the string, which balanced my aggressive , percussive approach with iron and wood beaters. We played for 15 minutes, adding more materials on tape but my I phone hardly detected them. You can hear some strange sounds that do not come out of a piano.
Balls 1+2 - Playing tennis is my greatest love and many times I tried to engage in a musical tennis game, since sound is important element in the game. Following John Zorn example of fitting music to ball games and others I looked for a partner, and in 2012 I found a painter, video artist and great tennis player Rafi Bilibarsky and with the help of the ZIMMER CLUB electrified the racquets, the walls ,and my son built a self rising ball machine with an old vacuum cleaner that could reverse the action and blow instead of suck.(actually we used the same trick in a multimedia performance in 1974 when we both were very young.) we accompanied the tennis playing with a video of high trampoline jumps I filmed in Yalta . That was Balls no.1
The zimmer changes places . We had a court yard, and Rafi brought Iris Domany, a very good player and his son ,Roy who played bass and had a lot of electronic gadgets. But most important addition was areal tennis gun that is used mainly by tennis coaches for practice.
By holding parts of a drum set we stood in line and directed our instruments opposite the tennis gun. When it worked to our satisfaction we formed a 4 players group called The Amazing cannonTennis Show.
Balls
The Amazing cannon Tennis Show - Musrara Music School is the place where I worked since its beginning in 2003 until 2021. Our show case was called Musrara Mix, a multimedia 3 days festival in the end of month of May, including performing guests from U.S and Europe (poster created by Iris Domany).
I performed 7 times, and the 8th was the most complicated, involving a sport compound, placed opposite the school, a new tennis gun, coverage of the fence with mikes and a week of preparations from the four of us, tuning ,bass, organ and accessories and using light and sound of the school. We performed 3 times a night, for three nights. The children who lived near by were thrilled, collected the balls, and hitting the walls and so were the grown up whom we encouraged to take an active part. The head of the school, AVI SABAG, mentioned our show as "the first time Musrara mix is appealing to the children of Musrara neighborhood". in July 2019 the group performed (without me) in BONN, GERMANY as a part of Israel-Bonn friendship week.
The Amazing Tennis Show (2018)
Requiem (based on a quote from the 7th seal , a film by I
.Bergman):
Using live sounds and samples + 3 loops by reel to reel and cassette recorders this was our most ambitious performance. After instrumental introduction using a lot of vocal samples, some of them imitating holy choirs we see 6 minutes of Bergman famous movie, only with a completely different under score, so that the musical climax of my playing comes after the Bergman's quote, where the shouts come higher artificially ,by digital means.
The Seventh Seal
Alte Zachen!
ALTE ZACHEN (old stuff): this street call was often heard in Israeli cities until the internet commerce took over. People with carts were trading in second hand stuff and this was their call, and in the 40's the megaphones came out ,and later cars proved easier to travel than horses and donkeys, you could give your old TV and get a used blender. We used original old recordings but changed the list items for sale ad absurdum: Our ALTE ZACHEN people sold synthesizers, studios, countries and planets. We put other street calls, a genre that is almost extinct together of many habits of street life.