lag baomer - fire and memory

A recomposition for Cities and Memory’s 2026 Spring Project, built from a field recording made by Emiko Morita in Venice’s historic Jewish ghetto, where a circle of men singing in a courtyard was caught on a foggy night during Lag BaOmer.

What pulled me in was the collective choral singing, how the melody fractured and glitched as voices and their echoes bounced off the surrounding buildings. That fractured vocal line became the backbone of the piece. Alto clarinet frames and responds to the voices before drones and distortion gradually take hold. Rhythmic clapping from the original recording carries the second half forward as the singing dissipates into the distance, until the clarinet is left alone to finish the melody.

Part of Cities and Memory’s Spring Project, an open call inviting artists to recompose field recordings from their global sound archive.