This piece is based upon a poem that was written about my father by the great Hungarian writer Peter Nadas. The poem, as well as the music, is divided into six parts. In the poem, the last verse is different from the first five. It is particular and personal as opposed to the first five. This is also apparent in the music - the last part is a six channel recording of the last verse of the poem sung by the wonderful tenor Topi Lehtipuu. In the first five the cello is playing solo while his sound is fed into the computer and manipulated in real time. In the background the words of the poem are being heard on and off as whispers from the six speakers surrounding the audience.


Hamlet is a play that remains relevant in our world today on many different levels. We were particularly interested in how revenge - then and now - creates a sort of snowball effect of collateral damage. Revenge is a never-ending cycle. There will always be retaliation and unintended victims. The story of Hamlet begins with one ghost demanding revenge for his foul death. This demand stems from the belief that if one is wrongfully killed, one becomes a ghost that cannot rest in peace until its death is avenged. In the pursuit to fulfill this demand Hamlet is responsible for nine more people suffering wrongful deaths and, as this logic goes, they too would become ghosts. In due time they will demand their own revenge. And so the vicious cycle will continue endlessly...






Perhaps 24 views on the same object from different perspectives. A bit like looking through a kaleidoscope. The structure of this composition abandons the traditional way of development through time, climax, etc. Only transformation from one moment to the next. The Electric Guitar blends in as a legitimate instrument in chamber music. Its sound is clean and warm and style of playing is influenced by jazz guitar tradition.


Alexander Polzin asked me to compose a new piece for the unveiling ceremony of his sculpture of Giordano Bruno in Berlin. In preparation for this work I read a lot about Bruno and tried to find my own connection to the subject. I quickly found out that Bruno was an admirer of the Maharal from Prague and that he always wanted to meet him. It is not written anywhere that the two actually met but it is known that Bruno was in fact in Prague in 1588 at the same time when the Maharal was there. This piece is inspired by the meeting that did (or did not) take place between the two men. In his fiction book 'Endless Things' John Crowley describes such a meeting. And what does all this have to do with me? Well, I am a direct descendant of the Maharal...
Premiered on Mar. 2, 2008 in Berlin by Freyja Gunnlaugsdóttir

This piece is composed for the same exact instrumentation as Ligeti's own Chamber Concerto. I have always admired Gyorgy Ligeti. I spent many hours studying his music and especially his Chamber Concerto for 13 instrumentalists. Ligeti died while I was working on this piece and I decided to make this work my homage to him.
Hommage à Ligeti was composed using a compositional method that is inspired by the idea of Fractals. A series of four numbers (5,6,4,4) dictate the micro and macro structure of the work. This method of composition can organize not only the structure of a piece but also its pitch material, rhythmic material and more but, even if strictly applied, it leaves much room for intuition on the part of the composer.
Premiered on Nov. 21, 2008 in Berlin by the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, conducted by Ferenc Gabor
This work was funded in part by the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center
An historic building on Lilenblum Street in Tel Aviv was going to be renovated and sold. This building used to house the secret headquarters of the high command of the Haganah organization. Until the time the renovation begins, it was given to the artist and curator Hadas Kedar who invited several artists to exhibit site specific works in the various abandoned spaces in the building.
I was given the former communication room. My work involves manipulated recordings of various Haganah leaflets and other related sounds and electronics. It was heard inside the room by hidden speakers.
First installed from Oct. 4-31, 2007 at the High Command exhibition in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Eight Flowers are set of eight very short pieces for piano. Each piece was inspired by and named after a certain flower and together they form a bouquet.
The order and number of times in which each of these pieces are played are left to the performer's discretion. In this way it is as if he/she is arranging the bouquet of flowers to suit his/her own taste.
Premiered by Gabor Csalog on June 11, 2006 in Neuhardenberg, Germany, in a festival honoring György Kurtág on his 80th birthday.


When my grandmother turned 100 I asked her what was her favorite poem. She said it was Gefunden by Goethe. I prepared this piece for her birthday as my present to her. I recorded her reading the poem in German and in Hebrew. Around these recordings I built the music for this piece. In a slow and minimalist approach my intention was to capture the essence of the poem as it was read by my grandmother. The original recording was not edited or manipulated thus retaining the tiny lingual mistakes and noises that she made. This work is a composed for a 4-channel surround system.
Premiered on May 11, 2006 in Jerusalem, Israel.
In Auden's lengthy poem, The Age of Anxiety, he follows the actions and thoughts of four characters that happen to meet in a bar during the Second World War. Their interactions with one another lead them on an imaginary quest in their minds in which they attempt, without success, to discover themselves. The themes and ideas that The Age of Anxiety conveys reflect his belief that man's quest for self-actualization is in vain. The Age of Anxiety is, in general, a quest poem. Unlike the ideal quest, however, this quest accomplishes nothing. The characters search for the meaning of self and, in essence, the meaning of life, but because their search is triggered by intoxication, the quest is doomed from the start. Throughout the quest, the characters believe themselves to be in a kind of purgatory, gradually descending toward hell. They fail to realize this due to "the modern human condition which denies possibility but refuses to call it impossible" (Nelson 117).
Alexander Polzin's series of 99 paintings based on Auden's poem grew out of the artist's fascination with "...the unusual mixture of poetic quality, clear meaningful sentences and rich images." The series was made in 1999, which is one of the reasons the artist decided to paint 99 paintings. The other reason being his strong desire to accomplish the nearly impossible task of composing 99 paintings simultaneously. Polzin divided the text into 99 segments after reading the poem over and over again developing his own "melody" of the text. He also wanted to highlight some of the sentences in the poem by disconnecting them from their surroundings. The anxiety in the poem, for Polzin, is hidden under several layers of meaning and so in his paintings he decided to use a technique of layering. At the bottom layer of each painting he pasted a segment of the text and painted the number of that segment corresponding to his own subdivision of the text. He then created layers of paint and images on top of that sculpting out the parts he wanted to emphasize. Through this process most of the text and numbers became invisible.
The sound source for this installation is largely based on a recording of five actors (four characters and one narrator) reciting the poem in a bar. During this process the actors were encouraged to drink as much as they wanted so as to recreate the mood of the original poem. The bartender was generous enough to turn off the background music during the recording and so the only background sounds are bar noises made by people drinking, conversing, laughing, playing pool, etc. Different layers of sound are created by transforming the bar recording electronically. These layers become alternately 'visible' and 'invisible' by fading them in and out. One of the electronic sound layers is created by analyzing 12 peaks from the recorded voice and connecting these peaks to 12 oscillators. The result is a sort of a modified reproduction of the actual voice recording. Another layer that is present is the sound of a quartet of wind instruments - tuba, trombone, trumpet and clarinet. Each instrument corresponds to a different character in the poem. These instruments are actually very high-quality samples of real instruments. Each note was recorded several times in different dynamic levels and different modes of attack. Extended playing techniques were also recorded and used. The actual notes that these instruments play are generated by a quasi-random process that uses a phrase, instead of a single note, as it's basic point of departure. The first thing that is determined on this level is the phrase duration. Since we are dealing with wind instruments, it has been taken into consideration that in normal situations the player of a wind instrument should have time to breathe after about 20 seconds of continuous playing. For each phrase the program decides: 1) What permutation and transposition of the row to play from a twelve tone matrix. 2) The durations of the notes in the phrase. 3) The dynamic range of the notes (for example, mp is not a constant level but a range). 4) The style of playing - staccato, legato, flutter-tongue, trills, etc. 5) The instrumental register - high, medium or low. What creates a relationship between the voices of the different instruments is that the phrases they all play are derived from the same source - the 12-tone matrix. Another layer is made out of percussion sounds that are triggered by the recording of the actors. The program picks out the 'attacks' of the recorded voice and these attacks trigger the percussion samples. Other transformations of the bar recording include pitch-shifting, delaying and spatializing. All of the sounds that are used in this piece are spatialized around the room by using four speakers that are placed in the four corners of the room.
First installed from Apr. 6 - 29, 2006 at the Goethe Institute in New York City.

Lies and lethargies was composed for the opening of an exhibition by the German painter Alexander Polzin titled "The Age of Anxiety". The title of the exhibition comes from the famous poem by W.H.Auden. The text that is heard in this piece is taken from a monologue by the figure Rosetta, which appears in Auden's poem. The monologue opens with the sentence "Lies and lethargies police the world in its period of peace..." and it expresses disgust with the repressed and frightened character of the human being and his inability to learn from past mistakes. There are four characters in Auden's poem but this difficult and sarcastic text is said by the one figure that is both a woman and a Jew. Both the recorded text and the guitar sound are fed into the computer, which performs various real time manipulations on the sound.
Premiered by Amos Elkana on Dec. 10, 2006 at the Felicja Blumental Music Center in Tel Aviv

\Plex"ure\, n. [See Plexus.] The act or process of weaving together, or interweaving; that which is woven together. --H. Brooke (Dictionary.com)
This duo is composed for the double-reed family of instruments. It features the Oboe, the English Horn and the Contrabassoon. The piece is divided into 4 sections that correspond to the AABA form. The degree of virtuosity required from the players is very high; the pitch ranges for the instruments are extreme but playing together and in time is probably as much of a challenge as reaching the notes at the extreme range of the instrument. This work is dedicated to my grandmother Miriam Keren and was premiered on the occasion of her 99th birthday.
Premiered by B. Schmutzler and D. Karamintzas on May 11, 2005 in Jerusalem, Israel
The second string quartet was written in 2004 for my father's 70th birthday. The work is composed of five parts. The first four are different from each other in atmosphere, rhythm and structure, but they are bound to each other through the musical motives which repeat themselves in various variations in each part. The fifth part is a kind of a musical summing up of the first four parts. In this part are heard, sometimes simultaneously, motives from the previous parts. This composition is written according to a composition method that I invented, inspired by the mathematics of fractals. The fractal is a geometrical form which is similar to itself at any level of breakdown at which we observe it. In other words: No matter how we look at its parts, the fractal will always be like its original form. The fractal is a common natural form: the leaf veins, blood vessels in our body, coast line, snow flake - in all these we can go into the finest detail and still feel as if we look at the whole picture. For composing music likewise, I use a series of numbers that dictate different durations within the work, from the level of the single note's duration up to the length of a whole movement. In this work the number series is 4-5-3-5-4. Thus, for example, the first movement is composed of 4 parts, the second of 5, the third of 3, the fourth of 5 and the fifth of 4. Likewise, the opening phrase of the work is composed of 4 notes, the next of 5, then of 3 and so on. The piece is not easily performed, mainly because it demands extremely high concentration and accuracy of the players. Although it is written in the common time signature of 4/4, the internal rhythmic division is very complex.
Premiered by the Carmel String Quartet on May 17, 2004 at The Henry Crown Auditorium in Jerusalem, Israel
Premiered by the Art OMI ensemble on Aug. 18, 2003 at the Goethe Institute in New York City.

This piece was created in collaboration with director and choreographer Sommer Ulrickson and artist Alexander Polzin for a dance-theatre performance in Berlin after rethinking and developing our collaborative work "Zwischenspiel". The music was all prerecorded and played back through loudspeakers. All parts except number 2 are electronic compositions while part 2 is for solo Guitar.


Premiered by the Akademia String Quartet on Oct. 15, 2001 at The Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.
This piece was created in collaboration with the choreographer Sommer Ulrickson and artist Alexander Polzin. The main theme of the work is 'manipulation' and the responsibility of the artist and was partially inspired by the life of the Nazi filmmaker Lenni Riefenstahl. The composition's two parts were prerecorded and use computer manipulated sampled sounds as well as acoustic Guitar and Piano recorded by the composer. A letter written by the Hungarian writer Peter Nadas of his thoughts about Lenni Riefenstahl is recited in German as part of the recorded music.
Premiered on Oct. 26, 2000 at Podewil Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany.

Premiered by the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet on Mar. 6, 1998 at The Tel Aviv Museum of Arts
The 13 poems that make the Arabic Lessons song cycle were written by the poet Michael Roes. Dr Roes wrote the poems in Arabic and then retranslated them into German (see the notes from the poet below). Professor Sasson Somekh of the Tel-Aviv University has kindly agreed to translate the poems into Hebrew from the Arabic original. The musical score of Arabic Lessons makes use of all the three languages. Some of the songs are sung simultaneously in Arabic, Hebrew and German. Each Song is scored using various instrumental combinations. There are two purely instrumental movements - one is the instrumental introduction "4 Loops" and the other is a solo for drum-set titled "Cannon". The work is composed in such a way so that it can be performed from beginning to end with no pause (ca. 35 minutes) or each song can stand alone as a composition by itself.
Premiered by an ad hoc ensemble conducted by Konstantia Gourzi on Mar. 9, 1998 at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, Germany

Music for the dance performance "Hagigit". Premiered on Feb. 4, 1998 at Z.O.A in Tel Aviv, Israel.
This work was written in 1995 for the New Israeli Quintet for Woodwind Instruments and was premiered by them at the Henry Crown Auditorium in Jerusalem that year. In the course of working with the quintet and from my knowledge of its members, I decided to insert a solo for each player, in which he is the dominant figure. In addition there is a middle part in which there is no soloist and all play together. The musical material of the quintet is based on a single chord of 5 notes, which appear in twelve variations. In each measure there is one appearance of the chord, so that the twelve measures contain all the possible appearances. Like a blues piece composed of twelve measures of specific harmonic content that repeat themselves over and over, also in this piece, the twelve measures repeat themselves indefinitely until the end.
Premiered by the New Israeli Woodwind Quintet on Mar. 20, 1995 at The Henry Crown Auditorium in Jerusalem, Israel.
Revadim ('strata') is a work that I wrote for the Musica Nova Consort. The composition begins and ends with a single sounding E pitch and the whole work evolves around this note. Different modern playing techniques are required from the musicians throughout the composition. This piece is influenced by the micro polyphonic works of Gyorgy Ligeti.
Premiered by the Musica Nova Consort on Feb. 6, 1995 at The Tel Aviv Museum of Arts
Tru'a which in Hebrew literally means "fanfare" was written for the clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. The piece is homage for the composer Witold Lutoslawski who was a great influence on me and a source of inspiration to me. This work was recorded in August 1997 by MMC Recordings, featuring Mr. Stoltzman and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Maestro Jerzey Swoboda. The work begins with an introduction part which is composed of very high pitched sounds (overtones) produced by the first violin section (divided into four groups) and a continuous high C overtone produced by the second violin section. Meanwhile there is a bass drone produced by the basses and timpani. The clarinet part is very demanding of the player. It uses extreme dynamics and some unorthodox sounds which require an excellent playing technique.
Premiered by Liat Elkana, Ferenc Gabor and Julia Sverdlov on Feb. 19, 1993 at the Jerusalem Music Center
Premiered by The Berlin Saxophone Quartet on Apr. 28, 1993 at Carnegie Hall in New York City
In Hebrew "Shir" means "a song" or "sing!" It is a short and virtuosic solo for flute that explores contemporary sound production techniques. I wrote it for my wife who played flute at the time but upon looking at the score she said, "Thank-you, I can't play this" and never looked at it again... Some years later I gave the score to Mr. Yossi Arnheim who is the principle flautist for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Arnheim premiered the piece in a concert series "The Flute at the Center" at the Jerusalem Music Center on January 23rd 1997.
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CONCOCT SONANCE is the new duo of Amos Elkana and
Yaaki Levy. There is also a Myspace page. Check it out!
Download: 1 Page Bio. (PDF) | CV (PDF)

Photo: Nira Pereg
Amos Elkana was born in Boston in 1967 but grew up in Jerusalem. At age 15 he picked up the Electric Guitar and began learning music which soon became his primary occupation in life. In 1987, after his compulsary army services in Israel, he returned to the U.S.A where he studied jazz guitar at the Berklee College of Music and composition in The New England Conservatory of Music. In 1990, after three years in Boston, he moved to Paris. In Paris he studied composition privately with Michele Reverdy and also took composition lessons with Erik Norby in Copenhagen and with Paul-Heinz Dittrich and Edison Denisov in Berlin.
In 1992 he returned to Israel and settled in Tel Aviv where his two daughters were born. Upon his return to Israel Elkana began an active carrer as a composer. Since then his music has been performed and recorded all over the world by such ensembles and musicians as the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, Musica Nova Consort, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Pianist Gábor Csalog, Berlin Saxophone Quartet, Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Flautist Yossi Arnheim,
In 2004 Elkana enrolled in the MFA program at Bard College, New York and in 2007 earned his MFA in Music and Sound. At Bard he focused primeraly on electronic music and took lessons with Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman, Richard Teitelbaum, George Lewis, Maryanne Amacher and Larry Polansky among others.
Today, Elkana composes concert music for orchestras, ensembles and individual performers as well as music for dance, theatre and films. Recent commissions include University of California SC, Schloss Neuhardenberg, The Jerusalem Symphony, The Berlin Festival, Tel Aviv Municipality, and the Israel Ministry of Education and Culture.
Many of Elkana's compositions are written for traditional orchestral instruments, but without the traditional boundaries. They are his attempt to carry the listener's imagination and senses into new territory. One of Elkana's works which has been critically very well-received is "Arabic Lessons", a multilingual song cycle for three sopranos and chamber ensemble, setting to music 13 poems by German writer and poet Michael Roes. Commissioned jointly by the Berlin Festival and The Tel Aviv municipality, the work won the 2003 Golden Feather of ACUM, Israel's Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
In its review of "Arabic Lessons" the English daily Jerusalem Post called it "a perplexing, beguiling 40-minute opus in which the composer challenges the so-called 'acceptable' form of the lieder, shattering it and building it anew, as if constructing a new world from its ashes. ... 'Arabic Lessons' is one of the most significant works composed in Israel for quite a while."
amos[AT]amoselkana[DOT]com

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Live Concert (DVD - 2008) |
Works (CD - 2005) |
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Perspectives II (CD compilation - 2008)
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Works 1992-1996 (CD - 1996) |
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MMC New Century: Vol.II (CD compilation - 1995)
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String Quartet No.2 (CD single - 2005)
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