Atar Trio Performs To the Bird From a Distant Land

To the Bird from a Distant Land was commissioned by the Atar Piano Trio for their program celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great pet Chaim Nachman Bialik. I composed the piece in response to his poem To the Bird (El HaTzipor), written when Bialik was just 19 years old and had recently moved to Odessa. There is a strong undercurrent of homesickness for the Biblical Aretz Israel of his imagination. The poem is episodic – variously referring to Bialy’s imaging of the distant land in both its beauty and potential difficulties, yet contrasting it again and again with his current situation. His ruminations move back and forth, taking flight like the bird he calls to. My response became a song without words, with the flight sometimes soaring, while at others caught in the darker moods of Bialik’s imaginings before taking wing again.