Nimrod Katzir: Men Sing

During the filming for Mediterranean Voices in Israel, the acoustic of a cave in a three-thousand-year-old Jewish cemetery inspired Nimrod Katzir to experiment with vocal sounds, resonant spaces and echoes. He was especially interested in the auditory experience at the cave entrance, the acoustic phenomenon of hearing only the echoing and distortion of the sounds without being able to make out the original. Using electronic media and remixing procedures, he tries to recreate this situation in his work Men Sing.
As his starting material he chose Luigi Nono’s piece Quando stanno morendo, gli uomini cantano (When Men Die, They Sing) for four female voices, bass flute, cello and live electronics. Selected fragments from the work’s vocal textures are sung by four voices located outside the concert hall, amplified and processed, and then, using two analogue synthesizers, fed into the hall through four loudspeakers placed around the audience.
It was not only the experience of singing at the cemetery that destined Quando stanno morendo to be the basis for the remix in Men Sing, but also connections between Katzir’s earlier life and this work in particular and most of all the political relevance it has to his own country. Familiar sounds and sonic gestures that return in the »modern guise« of electronic processing, as well as references to contemporary tragedies and their origins in the past, inspired the composer to create this piece.
Nono’s work is »dedicated to the Polish friends and comrades who offer resistance in exile, in the underground, in prison and at work.« For Nimrod Katzir, Quando stanno morendo is »a work about provocateurs living in exile. That becomes clear when you only hear the echo and not the singers themselves.«