We could all do with a breather. Some might head for foreign pastures, although air ticket prices are becoming increasingly prohibitive, or Eilat to grab some soothing winter rays.
Or you could go for a much more affordable option and just pop along to the Mazkeka basement joint in downtown Jerusalem this Saturday (9:30 p.m.) for Stephen Horenstein’s Quick Shift Messenger gig.
“I always wanted to do a piece with large gaping silences and a lot of surprises,” says the US-born Jerusalemite septuagenarian multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator.
Horenstein believes it’s time for a bit of a breather in musical climes. “A lot of contemporary music – classical, modern, and jazz – fill up all the space. I wanted to do a piece of essences in a small ensemble.”
Saturday’s show sees Horenstein perform in a trio setting, as he teams up with longtime sparring partner drummer-percussionist Haggai Fershtman and bass player Asaf Shchori, who gets his first run out with the leader.
Horenstein, a respected educator and internationally celebrated artist on the more adventurous side of the improvisational tracks, says he is just happy to be back on a stage after a furlough during which he spent much of his time on his second creative love of poetry.
“I really need to play. I realized that the thing I missed most, in life, was just to stand in front of an audience. It doesn’t have to be a large audience. That’s why I chose the Mazkeka. Many years ago, [Mazkeka head] Michael [Berkowitsch] asked me and [bassist] Jean-Claude [Jones] to test out the acoustics there. So I have a long relationship with the place.”
Plenty to offer the audience
In his pre-show notes, Horenstein talks about offering his audience “a cleansing, a sort of exorcism, of everything we have had to experience and store in our nervous system, especially over the last year.” That sounds refreshing and inviting.
“Obviously I have been deeply affected, like everyone, in the last year here,” he expounds. The new work addresses that. “There are points in the piece that probably reflect the kinds of tension inside the body, of people, because that’s where it’s held. I am trying to draw these kinds of feelings out of people. I think people with these experiences will come away [from the show] with a calmer feeling.”
Horenstein cites time and space, and the overloading thereof, on several occasions. He believes we all stand to gain by adopting an alternative stance on those two dimensions, particularly the former. “Basically, I’m using some series of time perception,” he explains.
He has the academic collateral, as well as the personal hands-on evidence, to back that up. “I did my doctoral thesis on how music can affect the perception of time.”
It is, he says, down to sonic textures and congestion. “I am working, right now, on a section [of music] that has many layers and, at a point, it becomes almost saturated. You go from the layered to texture to a whole saturation.” Density can do things to the way we consciously experience our surroundings.
“The time slows down. I’ve timed the section on my computer at five minutes and 12 seconds, but when the audience hears it, it’s going to sound like eight or nine minutes. It is going to seem like time is moving slower.” That could well induce a calming effect as we are borne through the musical offering without consciously being aware of the progression of time.
The concept of interludes between the audible passages is fascinating and should leave the audience members with room for imaginational maneuver, while drawing them into the thick of the creative action. “Great writers do it.
Beethoven did that. We’ve lost the capacity to alter silence,” Horenstein posits.
We could all do with dropping down a gear in that regard here, which may possibly help us move into a calmer, healthier, and healing state of mind.
If Quick Shift Messenger induces that mindset, the audience at Mazkeka could get more than it musically bargained for.
For more information and tickets: mazkeka.com/en/event/3295 and eventer.co.il/stephenhorensteintrio.