Some photos from the 2012 Brevard Music Festival! I attended as a composer fellow and premiered two new pieces. Lots of happy memories!
Brevard
Author: Ezra Donner
Ezra Donner is an American composer, conductor, pianist, and teacher. He serves as Music Director at The Birmingham Temple Congregation for Humanistic Judaism in Farmington Hills, Michigan, and teaches at Ada Conservatory of Music in Ada, Michigan.
“Occupy” (2012) for tenor saxophone and 2 percussionists
Jazzy and rebellious music inspired by the early post-minimalists.
“Tchotchkes” (2012) for violin and piano
Serious and dour music in the tradition of the early Moderns.
“¡Cigarra!” with Boston New Music Initiative
Just attended a great performance of ¡Cigarra! with the Boston New Music Initiative at The Lilypad in Cambridge, Mass. Thanks to Kirsten Volness and everyone else who helped make this possible!
Review of “Ile” in Artsong Update
The final work was the most dramatic: Ezra Donner’s operatic adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Ile, about a ship and crew at sea for two years searching for a full cargo of whale oil. The impressive Kenneth Weber was the obsessed Captain Keeney, who puts down a mutiny (“I’m the law on this ship!”) by crewmen who want to turn the ship for home. As his wife, Signe Mortensen brought out the intense loneliness of a woman on a ship, hungry for the sound of a woman’s voice; she begged her husband to turn around or she’ll go mad. He promised to — and then reneged. She snapped, laughing crazily and, on the organ he brought aboard for her comfort, playing an insane mishmash of hymn tunes — including a brief snatch of the hymn tune known as the Navy Hymn — “for those in peril on the sea.” Both Weber and Mortensen had the power and skill to make every word count.
from a review by M.D. Ridge in Artsong Update, June 2012:
2012 John Duffy Composers’ Institute
Thanks to everyone involved in the 2012 John Duffy Composers’ Institute! I attended with six other composer fellows for a two-week residency, and heard excerpts from Ile, a new sung drama based on the 1921 play by Eugene O’Neill, workshopped and performed.
a rehearsal at the 2012 John Duffy Composers’ Institute, Norfolk, Va.
Here is the video from this amazing performance!
Jerusalem
In our visit to Jerusalem we explored around in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. The day we were there, there was at least one bar mitzvah ceremony going on:
The trumpet player didn’t seem to appreciate being photographed: after I snapped a picture of him, he came right up to me and blasted loudly in my face.
The iconic Dome of the Rock:
The Kotel, or Western Wall:
Tel Aviv and Jaffa
Independence Hall in Tel Aviv:
The Itzhak Rabin Memorial:
An amazing open-air market in Jaffa:
Tzfat and Merom Golan
From May 5-15, 2012, I visited Israel on a Birthright Israel trip. These photos show some of the highlights of my trip.
The old city of Tzfat:
On and around a nearby Kibbutz:
Near the northern border with Lebanon:
Variations for Piano (2012)
Solid, granitic, and sardonic music inspired by the Early Modernists.
Ezra Donner 