Situation: Normal (2018)

This was my very first orchestral piece, and I’m incredibly grateful to the Yale Symphony Orchestra for the time they spent with me learning and recording it. It’s not as polished as my later works, but I’m keeping it up because it marks my first contention with the Israeli side of my identity in music, my introduction to musical community under the auspices of the Israeli embassy, and the first stirrings of my opposition to the occupation and Netanyahu administration. There is a very simple, Ivesian concept at work here: a tonal, martial A theme conflicts with an atonal, revolutionary B theme, which spells out a WWII slogan in Morse code: “This world cannot exist half free and half slave.”