Galut (Exile) is a work about the Jewish people's life among the communities outside of Israel, particularly from the year 70 A.C., when Jerusalem fell to the Romans, until the end of the 19th century, when the movement to return to the land of Israel started in earnest. The story is complex, varied and very dramatic but my main focus will be on the contributions of the Jewish people to the nations that welcomed them in their exile.
Last year I finished and premiered, with the San Fernando Valley Master Chorale, the work "The Nightmare and the Dream: Herzl and the Creation of Israel." That was an hour work that took about 5 years to complete and 2 more years to premiere. There was a pressing need for that work as we have seen people with different agendas alter, distort and malign this story to further their own ends. The actual story is sort of miraculous, how one man's vision was able to help a whole people go back to a land from which they were expelled 1,900 years before his time.
That was the second large work about Jewish history that I composed. The first one was Moses, an Oratorio, an 85 minute work for soloists, choir and orchestra, which gave us the story of Moses, as depicted in the Hebrew scriptures, from before his birth until after his death. That work was premiered in 2017, in Los Angeles, at Wilshire Boulevard Temple, an historical site.
Now I am engaged in the research necessary to write the third work, "Galut" (Exile). The work is going to be around 30 minutes long and will also be a work for choir, soloists and an instrumental ensemble. It is incredible how much there is to know about those years and how vibrant the history of the Jewish people in Europe and in other parts of the world has been. When you think about Medieval Spain you cannot even conceive its life with its Jewish communities, both in the Christian and the Muslim communities of the time.
This work, which will differ from the previous ones in that it wont be a chronological telling of the story but more like a collage based on it, will complete a trilogy that will encompass Jewish history from Biblical times to the present and that will fit into 2 concerts, the first one featuring "Moses, An Oratorio" and the second one presenting "Galut" and "The Nightmare and the Dream."
Thank you for your help in completing this work and for bringing the saga of the Jewish People to life, in as much as it is possible within three hours of music.
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