Adaya Godlevsky is an Israeli harp player-composer-improviser. SPACE is her composition for fellow harp players, a graphic notation for an eight-minute composition, in the adagio tempo, that may suggest a painful, apocalyptic break or fracture, for solo harp or harp and electronics and vocals. Godlevsky asked a few of her musical heroes – American experimental harp player Zeena Parkins, Welsh harp player Rhodri Davies, and French Hélène Breschand, all add electronics, and young Israeli harp players Ada Ragimov and Lior Ouziel to offer their interpretation for this composition.
Godlevsky explains that SPACE addresses «the constant and fertile reverberations in the spaces, where compositions are performed and incarnate in life. It breathes within the delicate boundaries of the absolute score, and the moment of choice in the musician’s improvisation». This composition encourages the distinct harp players to discover and express themselves within the suggestive graphic notation and make it their own. The album, which was recorded in New York, Tel Aviv, Ystradgynlais Wales), and Paris between 2022 and 2023, offers a new whole, both intertwined and separate.
Parkins offers the most enigmatic, dramatic and unsettling interpretation of the composition while extending the sonic palette of the harp with subtle electronics, and at times even flirting with noise. Ragimov recites a quote from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando beautifully and suggests a delicate, poetic interpretation of the composition and text, slowly and gently adding more dramatic nuances. Davies retakes SPACE to experimental regions with his bowed harp and electronics and sketches a cryptic, highly resonating soundscape. Breschand recites the love poem of Iranian poet Alireza Roshan, «jusqu’à toi combien de poèmes» (How many poems are up to you, … This music that I send you / Where all voices are expressed / which sink into the earth / To reach you who listens to me beyond the oceans…) with great passion, and accompanies herself in a likewise dramatic and sensual mode, with her vocals multiplied and layered with electronics. Ouziel adds some noisy, percussive ornamentations to his interpretation of this mysterious composition and concludes the arresting and thoughtful prism of it, by the daring harp players, and by Godlevsky who chose them and produced this globetrotting musical adventure.
Eyal Hareuveni
Zeena Parkins (harp, electronics), Ada Ragimov (harp, vocals), Rhodri Davies (harp, electronics), Hélène Breschand (harp, electronics, vocals), Lior Ouziel (harp)
