Interview with Amit Dolberg
"This is not a time to be sad; it’s a time to be angry."

By Hadassa Levy

You and Meitar just concluded this year’s CEME festival, which took place entirely in the digital space - how did it go?   

From the beginning of the crisis, we decided to stay very active but since broadcasting is not our field, it took us some time to understand how we could present the Meitar ensemble in the right way. During the CEME festival, I felt for the first time that we had succeeded and the real Meitar energy was finally shining through. Everything came together: the different pieces - many of which we heard for the very first time -  the pace, the energy and the new “Speak up!” project. To mark the last concert, we opened yet another channel of communication with our audience and presented the first part of a piece for sound and light by Israeli composer Yair Klartag and light designer Yoav Barel. It was a wonderful way to end the festival. 

How many participants did you have for this first ever digital edition of the festival?   

Fourteen students from all over the world, so we had to build the schedule for different time zones. In the morning, our new composer in residence Mauro Lanza, who is currently in Berlin, met with students from Shanghai and South Korea, at noon from Israel and Europe and in the afternoon from the United States. Not only that, due to the situation even some of our own ensemble members and our conductor were not in Israel, so we had to find solutions for problems we never encountered before. Ultimately it worked because everybody accepted the situation and everybody was hungry for serious work.

Initially you had planned to livestream some of the concerts, but the third lockdown forced you to record everything beforehand within a short time – how did you do that?

We recorded the concerts without an audience, and since we are now part of the new “Raash” recording studio with the Tremolo ensemble at their percussion center in Netanya, we can do all our recording and filming ourselves. This allows us to make changes to our schedule and adapt to different circumstances on a very short notice.

You could have just adapted your regular festival program for online viewing. However, you decided to do something different this year and add a clearly political note with the “Speak up!” series. Could you tell us more about this project? 

As you know, we had some serious lockdowns in Israel, especially affecting the Israeli cultural scene, and as I mentioned before, we decided from the beginning to stay active, no matter what. We also wanted to be very clear and outspoken about the situation, so we published photos from protests we went to as an ensemble on our Facebook page and put our thoughts into words without considering the consequences. I talked to many people from the cultural scene and told them that now is not a time to cry and to be sad but a time to be angry. Maybe next year I’ll be sad, I don’t know, but today my energy is very different and the ensemble feels the same way. “Speak up!” allows us to use our abilities as musicians to connect composers and writers. We asked different people to write and record a statement about something they are protesting, short, angry without introductions and without offering any solutions. We then sent those raw, emotional statements to our composers, asked them to compose something very fast – I think the longest they took was one week – and then recorded it with our soloists, which again allowed us to record from their homes or wherever possible. The festival was the perfect platform to launch this project. 
 

So the pieces are very spontaneous without a lot of editing work? 
 
Yes, they definitely have a spontaneous feel to it but it still took us a few months of planning to find the right channel. I think that in the end, all of the new festival pieces are on the political side one way or another. Some very obviously so like Batya Frenklach’s piece which is a slow motion piece of us chanting at the protests that becomes clear as it picks up its pace towards the end. Eli Korman wrote a piece about a scene from his time in the Israeli army so it’s also connected to our reality here. 

How did you choose the speakers?  

I was looking for diversity so I talked to lots of different people, not necessarily from the art world whose thoughts and opinions interested me on a personal level. However, it’s not easy to open up like this for everyone. I mean, as a pianist, I’m used to being protected behind a massive instrument, but for them it was different. Most of them recorded from their own home, speaking right into the camera from the bottom of their hearts, which made the situation very intimate. It takes courage but this is what’s going on in Israel right now: Everything is personal, everything is painful and I think the music scene should reflect that. 

You think musicians should step in and become more political?

I think everything is about politics right now, unfortunately. Look, I know that I’m pretty spoiled here. I’m complaining that I can’t play concerts due to political decisions but this is nothing. People are dying because of decisions that are not based on science. For the same reasons that I’m not allowed to play concerts, other people are really suffering. This is the situation and I believe we should use our position to speak up. And it seems to work: We had over 30.000 people visit our Facebook page last month – more traffic than ever before. It makes us feel better.  
Do you discuss the current situation with your colleagues in other countries? Do they experience the same anger? 

I guess every place responds differently to the situation but here in Israel everything is much more dramatic and there’s always a distinct political flavour to everything. Corona is just one more plague on top of the other issues like the conflict with the Palestinians, the question of Jerusalem, corruption, etc. 

We are in touch with people from France, Germany and Italy and the situation is very difficult there as well. Especially in France and Germany, where art has always enjoyed immense support, they are suddenly finding themselves in a situation they have never experienced before.

Do you think that in a way it was easier for you to adapt to the new reality and continue your creative work as you are used to survive on little government support?

Look, as a contemporary music ensemble in Israel, we are like cockroaches. No matter what will happen, we will survive. We are ready for everything. I seriously never worried about the survival of Meitar. It’s not easy but it’s also very romantic. Dramatic and romantic.

Romantic? 

Sure, the behind the scenes, the process of creation is very romantic. When you commission a piece, when you think about new things that maybe nobody has done before – it’s very romantic. We are very emotional people even though sometimes we play music that doesn’t sound emotional to everyone. 

Oh, I definitely felt the anger. There were moments where I thought to myself “what are they doing?” and then it hit me “wow, they are really angry” and I felt very strongly that I understood what you meant by the music you played. 

We got beautiful reactions from all over the world. People wrote to us that they cried during the last concert and it’s not just because of the music but the whole combination: There are so many people in lockdown around the world and this is how they listen to music right now. It was the right time for this kind of festival. When we went on stage for the first time, filming ourselves, we felt weird. We felt like we need to act and we really missed the audience but during these last six weeks of rehearsing and recording for the festival every day, we felt that finally everything came together. Nobody felt awkward; we just wanted to play this music for this time and expose the audience to it, no matter what. That was the energy we needed.

All the anger and difficult emotions aside, there are also positive things that are happening in these crazy times. One of them is the support from our friends: The Tremolo Percussion Center, Levontin 7, The Netanya Conservatory and the Felicja Blumental Music Center where we rehearsed and recorded. And, of course, the kind support and close collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute and our friends at Goethe-Institut Israel. 


To the concerts CEME 2021 - 

   

Pianist Amit Dolberg is one of Israel's leading performers of new music. Many important composers have written and dedicated works to Amit and he has performed and made recordings with conductors Matthias Pintscher, Ilan Volkov, Avner Biron, Pierre-André Valade, Zsolt Nagy, Fabián Panisello and others. Amit has collaborated with orchestras and ensembles in Israel, Asia and Europe and performed in numerous venues and music festivals around the world. He is the founder and director of the International Chamber Music Meitar Ensemble, The Matan Givol composers’ competition, the Tedarim (M.Mus) in contemporary music track at the Jerusalem Academy for Music and Dance where he is also member of the teaching faculty, the young composers CEME Festival and the CEME International Festival for new music and master classes. Amit Dolberg is a founding member of the Dada Ensemble.

This interview was held by Hadassa Levy and Carola Dürr.