Contemporary Composer Ofer Pelz Releases Trinité Album Featuring Tel-Aviv's Meitar Ensemble

Known for combining diverse instruments and electroacoustic media, Israeli-born Montréal-based composer/pianist/improviser Ofer Pelz celebrates the release of his second solo album, Trinité (TBR 06.11.21). Comprising five works composed over the span of eight years that were recorded in three different countries, this album embodies the composer's international musical journey spanning continents and his prowess in turning sound and noise into music.

According to Pelz, his music explores the concept he defines as "unstable repetition" - repetitive fragments which vary from repetition to repetition, all the while trying to keep a perceivable tension.

"When I write I begin from a world of sounds that I imagine. I try to observe the same sounds from several kinds of perspectives: slowly, quickly, from nearby, from a distance, from the side, partially, and similar approaches; and I will try to incorporate a part of these perspectives."

Born in Israel in 1978, Pelz has studied composition, music theory, and music technology at Jerusalem, Paris, and Montréal. Pelz transforms traditional instruments into sound gestures which is on prominent display in Chinese Whispers. "Commissioned by the Meitar Ensemble, the piece opens with a percussive passage blending the breath of wind instruments and the sighs of strings. After a long collective glissando (in which we find, as with Philippe Leroux, an 'electronic' inspiration applied to acoustic music), the piece ends up exhaling its last breath through the wind instruments." (ResMusica) According to The New York Times, "the end - long seconds of toneless evocation of breathing - was as delicate as music gets."

The composer's Israeli identity coupled with his experiences in Paris and Montreal make for a unique aesthetic. There is no better representation of the composer's cross-cultural influences than the album's fourth track, marchons, marchons. Commissioned by Expo Milano 2015, this 12-minute piece reinterprets the notion of "nourishing our planet" by using lyrics from both the French national anthem La Marseillaise ("qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons! [Let an impure blood soak our fields!], and an Israeli national song, "the blood that springs/nourishes the soil," as a social and political critic on the subject.

Ofer Pelz composes music for diverse combinations of instruments and electroacoustic media; he is also an active improviser. He is the co-founder of Whim Ensemble and Tesse Ensemble. He holds a doctorate in Composition from the University of Montreal. Having also studied at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, as well as at the CNR Blanc Mesnil, CNSM, and IRCAM in Paris. The work of Ofer Pelz has been recognized by the reception of many international prizes including two ACUM awards, French 'Commande d'état' and the Ernst Von Siemens Grant. His music is played regularly in festivals such as IRCAM-ManiFeste, La Biennale di Venezia, MATA Festival, Nuova Consonanza, Heidelberger Biennale für Neue Musik, and Cervantino festival. Meitar Ensemble, Cairn Ensemble, Ardeo String Quartet, The Israel Contemporary Players, Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Quasar Quartet, Architek Percussion, Geneva Camerata, and Neue Vocalsolisten are among the ensembles that plays Pelz's music. Pelz has collaborated with several dance choreographers, among them the French choreographer François Raffinot.

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