Going for a run

‘Ritza’ (Running) is a tribute to Israel Prize-winning writer S. Yizhar.

By BARRY DAVIS
A scene from ‘Ritza’ (Running), a tribute to Israel Prizewinning writer S. Yizhar (photo credit: GERARD ALLON)
A scene from ‘Ritza’ (Running), a tribute to Israel Prizewinning writer S. Yizhar
(photo credit: GERARD ALLON)
Even in a genre-bending world of music where practically every style of instrumental and vocal expression is produced and is readily available at the click of a mouse button, Avshalom Ariel offers us an impressively eclectic array of sounds.
Still only 24, Ariel is the brains, heart and technical expertise behind quite a few envelope-pushing vehicles in the local entertainment arena, and also wrote the music for a musical-theatrical production being put on by the Ruth Kanner Theater Group called Ritza (“Running”).
The play is a tribute to Israel Prize-winning writer S. Yizhar, who would have been 100 years old in 2016, and is based on his compelling book Running by the Sea. The performances will take place at the Tel Aviv Museum on January 10 and 11 (both 9 p.m.).
If Kanner was looking to spread the sonic backdrop, she couldn’t have done much better than opting for Ariel, who happens to be her son. Although tender of years, Ariel has accrued an impressive compositional and performance bio to date, gaining an honors bachelor’s degree in composition from Tel Aviv University to boot.
The young composer spreads his creative wares across an expansive swath of sounds and approaches, from contemporary classical material to avant-garde rock-oriented numbers and much between.
It all started for Ariel at the noisier end of the rock spectrum.
“The first song I remember hearing, that I really got into, was “Of Wolf and Man” [by 1980s American heavy-metal outfit Metallica],” he recalls. “I was in fourth grade when a friend told me about the song, and that’s how I got into music.”
Ariel says it was an appropriate baptism of sound, which provided him with lasting formative pointers.
“Right from the word go, I got into extreme things. I really loved this thing about music that goes all the way.”
It was quite a change from the regular domestic fare.
“After hearing all the regular Israeli songs, suddenly I heard something that was dirty and aggressive and violent. That really appealed to me.” And still does. “To this day, I am drawn to that kind of music, even if it is not noisy at all. It can be really quiet.”
That comes across, for example, in Ariel’s intriguing classical work Stadiums, performed by a quintet of wind instrument players. The work begins from the nether regions of the decibel scale and builds in terms of tension and, to a degree, volume but never gets even close to being raucous. Then there is his in-your-face contributions to the wild and woolly rock act Saal Hardali, which puts out all manner of dark and jagged- edged sounds reminiscent of the late pioneering avant-garde rocker Frank Zappa.
Basically, Ariel just wants us to give ear, and he feels that pushing at the boundaries, any boundaries, is a good way to grab your audience’s attention. “I think that as soon as you don’t go with convention, and you try to encapsulate something extreme, in any sort of direction, you sharpen your listening faculties.”
Then again, Ariel doesn’t want to entirely throw us in at the deep end without a life belt in sight. “I am always looking for new things, and for new ways to make music. For example, I have become interested in the possibility of writing music using computer algorithms. On the other hand – and this is something I have begun to understand to a greater extent, the more I write music – music gains a lot from the fact that it incorporates familiar elements, that it uses familiar models or even clichés. The music that really interests me fuses elements that are very familiar with some kind of contortion [of the same elements]. You get something really new by virtue of the change that is introduced to the things you would otherwise instantly recognize.”
That harks back to the mantra you will hear from any jazz artist worth his salt. The idiom is, by definition, an innovation- based form of creation, but jazz educators regularly remind their students that they have to get a solid handle on the roots of the genre before they can begin to make their own new statements.
Ariel also goes along with that ethos, citing one of the greats of modern jazz as a prime example of having a foot in both temporal camps.
“[Iconic bass player and composer Charles] Mingus, to my mind, was one of the jazz musicians who went deepest into the roots of the music,” Ariel notes. “He went to [early jazz style] Dixieland and also to African music. He went back into the past and, in so doing, he created something refreshing and new.”
Ariel may always have at least one eye on breaking into new areas and feeding off as many sources of inspiration as possible, but he says he does his best to remain grounded and rooted in his home patch. “It has become increasingly important for me to figure out what it means to create music in Israel, how to make your own statement, not only through influences of music from other parts of the world, but also to understand the tradition that evolved here.”
That can take in extensive domains. “I don’t necessarily mean that I’d go for Eastern elements but, in contrast with a lot of young composers around today, that does involve seeing yourself as part of the Israeli tradition.”
Ariel is Israeli, and proud of it, and feels that in order to produce viable new works, he has to be connected with his natural cultural baggage, rather than reaching out for the products of foreign climes, however enticing they may be. “There is a tendency among young writers – and I certainly include myself in the younger bracket – to write songs in English, for example. The idea of writing texts in Hebrew is not universally lauded today. I think there is a relatively small number of people today who are writing things that are fresh and new and also in Hebrew.”
Forging his own path, regardless of popular trends, has been a constant throughout Ariel’s burgeoning oeuvre.
That comes to the fore in the score he wrote for Ritza.
“Things – the way we are on stage and the way we play the music – go ‘wrong’ in this show,” he explains. “Gradually, we find ourselves cast into a far more dangerous and far more chaotic world. That’s the direction in which the music goes. It starts out from an organized and foreseeable place and gradually deteriorates.”
The music, naturally, feeds off the onstage action and the base material. “The storyline unravels, and things start to go wrong, in the story in the book [by S. Yizhar] on which the show is based, too,” Ariel notes.
After a few minutes of chatting with the young composer, I started to get the notion that had he been born, say, 25 or so years earlier, he might have gotten into the punk rock scene that exploded in the UK in the mid-’70s.
“I have never felt that I belong to any musical community, except for a few people who are part of the punk scene in Israel,” he laughs. “That is the only scene in which I felt I had some kind of partners to my musical road, partners to what interests me in music.”
Although Ariel has no need of nepotism to find work, he is delighted to join forces with his mom on the current project.
“I think we work well together. It is a mutually inspiring professional connection, too,” he says. “But I don’t really feel the family relationship in the work. We are both looking to produce the best work we can.”
For tickets and more information: (03) 607-7020 and www.ruthkanner.com