There's no lack of void

Year: 2016

Commissioned by the Adele and John Gray Endowment Fund

Instrumentation: Flute, Bass Clarinet, Trombone, Piano, Percussion, Violin, Viola, Cello

First performance by Ensemble Linea, conductor: Jean-Philippe Wurtz - 13.04.2016, National Sawdust (New York)

Other performances:

  • Ensemble Linea, conductor: Jean-Philippe Wurtz - 18.04.2016, Mary B. Galvin Recital Hall, Northwestern University, Chicago (USA)
  • Insomnio Ensemble - 11.09.2016, TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht (Netherlands)
  • International Ensemble Modern Academy - 16.09.2016, Florian-Waldeck-Saal, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim (Germany)
  • International Ensemble Modern Academy - 22.09.2016, Kleiner Saal, Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
  • International Ensemble Modern Academy - 29.09.2016, ZKM_Kubus, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe (Germany)
  • Israel Contemporary Players, conductor: Ilan Volkov - 07.01.2017, Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv (Israel)
  • ensemble mosaik, conductor: Christoph Breidler - 23.08.2017, Heimathafen Neukölln, Berlin (Germany)
  • Israel Contemporary Players, conductor: Zsolt Nagy - 17.09.2018, Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv (Israel)
  • Studio for New Music Moscow - 18.11.2018, Rakhmaninov Hall, Moscow (Russia)
  • Tokyo Sinfonietta, conductor: Yasuaki Itakura - 10.07.2019, Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo (Japan)
  • UMZE Chamber Orchestra, conductor: Gergely Vajda - 22.10.2020, Budapest Music Center, BMC Concert Hall (Hungary)
  • PHACE Ensemble, conductor: Nacho de Paz - 16.02.2021, Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna (Austria)
  • NYU Contemporary Music Ensemble, conductor: Jonathan Haas - 20.11.2023, Iris Cantor Theater, New York (USA)

Recording:

Note:
"There's no lack of void" continues to examine what does musical meaning signifies for me. I tried to create a piece in which there is an abundance of musical events and materials. This abundance strips them from their significance and turns them into a sort of musical waste. I wanted to create a musical context that will correspond to my overwhelming experience of being exposed to so much music, that it's hard to have meaningful experiences.

When Vladimir asks Estragon in Becket's "Waiting for Godot": "Where were we yesterday evening according to you?", Estragon answers "How would I know? In another compartment.There's no lack of void". Adorno in his article “Trying to Understand Endgame”, describes Beckett's writing as writing in which "the poetic process declares itself to be a process of wastage".

In this flux of events and musical wastage, I was hoping to find moments of authentic not-self-aware-or-self-referential honest expression.