The Garden Synagogue, Op. 3.

Ensconced in the Garden District of Cape Town’s city interior stands the oldest Shul in the country; The Garden Synagogue. Opus 3 was conceived after a visit to the South African Jewish Museum. Starting at the entrance of the old Synagogue, the museum winds through corridors and spiral staircases, as the rich history of Jewish life in South Africa is lavished upon the viewer. The more visceral experience for me was my daughter, then not yet even 2, experiencing this event with me.

There is something particularly poignant and timeless, both secular and spiritual, that exists in Jewish culture. My daughter, not yet fully cognizant of what it means to be Jewish seemed integral to the power of that place.

I scored the piece over the next few days, reconstructing musically the pathway from the garden district to the synagogue, the spiral staircases, and eventually the facade of the new synagogue where the two stone tablets are enshrined. The introduction moves through a slow and quiet build that ascends into a shower of cascading brass, before moving to a presentation of the synagogue itself. The liturgical setting of Shalom Aleichem is used as the basis of a contrapuntal web that connects to the descending spiral staircase, told through cyclical descending spirals in the woodwinds before finally climaxing on a.grand orchestral tutti. It is easily my most populist work, embarrassingly so at times, which if I were being honest feels something like a Hebrewized Ravel. That is probably why it was the first piece to be approached for publication by Subito Music Publishers, New York.