(2.2.2.2 / 4.2.2.1 / timp+3perc, harp / str)
Program Note
Kol Nidrei is the culmination of a project that began nearly four years ago in 2019. In the days following Yom Kippur, I found myself haunted by the Kol Nidrei melody. I originally conceived of this piece in dual versions for wind ensemble and orchestra and started work soon after, intending to finish one or both within a year.
Of course, the world had other plans. That Yom Kippur in 2019 was the last time I stood in a sanctuary packed wall to wall with close friends and anonymous strangers. In the months that followed, as the COVID-19 pandemic drove us into isolation, writing this piece became a way of preserving that experience in a time when being so close to so many human bodies was, for some, a death sentence.
The original wind ensemble version of Kol Nidrei spent many months on the edge of completion, frustratingly close to being finished, until I ultimately set the piece aside to work on other projects.
I returned near the end of 2021, more than a year later, to pick up the threads. This time, I set my sights on the version for orchestra. Though I kept sections of the original wind ensemble version, I rewrote many sections almost entirely and freely added new material around the original. I did ultimately finish this version, but it, too, felt frustratingly incomplete. So it was in the fall of 2022 that I once again returned to pick up the threads, this time with the aim of finishing the wind ensemble version.
This new Kol Nidrei is neither a completion of the original wind ensemble version, nor a transcription of the orchestra version. Instead, it inherits qualities of both, but still retains an identity of its own. Some passages are entirely unique to this version of the piece, while others remain practically unchanged from the earliest sketches. It is not a strict setting; it wanders off the path into new moods, sometimes introspective, sometimes chaotic. But it always returns to the original melody, a melody that is beautiful and haunting, dark and mysterious, yet pushes up and up, triumphant and full of life.