Yitzhak Yedid: Since My Soul Loved

Award-winning Israel-based composer/pianist Yitzhak Yedid's Since My Soul Loved casts notions of self-realization, all iterated via lucid imagery. He enables the psyche to conjure up a multitude of scenarios with these four, contemporary classical pieces, bearing resemblance to East and West song forms amid brief sojourns into avant-garde musical terrain.

Yedid outlines his multifarious composing processes and derivations within the album liners. He conveys a chamber feel, yet the differentiator pertains to the artist's morphing of western Jewish music, gently touched with jazz inferences and third stream components. On "First Movement," the strings section renders extended note choruses and subtle shadings, in concert with Yedid's cascading chord clusters and simple melody lines. At times, it seems that the music is akin to having a glimpse through a peephole, where Yedid's personalization of the material shines radiantly.

These works convey semblances of introspection and remorse, amid interweaving storylines, spiced with the strings' abrupt, upper register staccato passages. Yedid supplements these movements with tension building phraseology, shaded with heavy-handed ostinato chord clusters and perplexing storylines. The resplendence of Yedid's imagery strikes again on "Third Movement," which is accentuated by the strings' weeping opuses. Here, the soul is crying as Yedid contrasts the overall vibe by softening the austere outlook.

Yedid finalizes the "Fourth Movement" on a quiet and reflective note. The ending mirrors his accompanying statement, cited in the notes: "People seek happiness in the wrong places, and they will never find it." The pianist elevates music in its purest form into an amalgamation of emotive aspects that spawn purposeful intentions. He transcends the genre or stylization aspects, by presenting these largely, dark and inward looking motifs into an altruistic depiction of the human spirit.