Please Find Attached (2021) portrays a fictitious email exchange between a composer and an ensemble in preparation for a new work. Working with the New York New Music Ensemble was a wonderful experience, unlike the one depicted in the piece. Based on our exchanges, the performers sent me recordings of various instrumental, vocal, and found-object sounds, ranging from a Bach chorale to a squeaking rubber chicken. These became the basis of the musical materials that accompany the email exchange starring the ensemble members and myself. All sounds heard in this piece were recorded in our respective homes in the US and Belgium during the pandemic. Indeed, if it had not been for the COVID-19 pandemic, this piece would never have been born. The context of working remotely with NYNME led to fruitful, creativity-inducing limitations. It was also, of course, a period of reflection on long-distance communication, which amplifies the difficulties already inherent in speaking face to face. We’ve all been there: writing an email to someone we don’t know well, attempting to find the right wording and to convey the right tone, wishing it were professionally acceptable to use an emoji. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we are still misinterpreted. Sometimes, maybe, the situation spirals out of control, both sides get defensive, and all goodwill is lost.
Oren Boneh is a composer based in Brussels who writes music characterized by its energy and dynamism. Its foundation is made up of vastly contrasting characters, ranging from abrasive and mechanical to humorous and supple. The music plays with listener expectations of the characters’ behaviors in order to create unpredictability and friction.
Oren’s music has been performed by ensembles such as Vertixe Sonora, Alarm Will Sound, Quatuor Tana, Ensemble Meitar, Proton Bern, the Divertimento Ensemble, Ensemble Reconsil, NYNME, and Architek Percussion. A Germany Fulbright Scholar, Oren won first prize in the 2017 Salvatore Martirano Competition and has been selected in numerous competitions such as the ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, the Impuls Composition Competition, the Franco Donatoni International Competition, the Loadbang Commission Competition, and Protonwerk No. 8. Oren’s music has also been performed at Festival ManiFeste, the Missouri International Composers Festival, Cultivate at the Copland House, Soundstreams, Tzlil Meudcan, CEME, Festival Mixtur, UC Davis Revision/s, and he has been in residence at the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Visby International Centre for Composers, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.
Oren completed the IRCAM Cursus in 2020 and recently completed his PhD in composition at the University of California, Berkeley where he worked with Franck Bedrossian and Edmund Campion.