SKU: OT.21125
ISBN 9789655051117. 8.27 x 11.69 inches.
The five short movements for solo cembalo are brief, personal prayers that depict how the subject manages a range of feelings and emotions. The miniatures each represent a different emotional state: reflection, searching, meditation, agitation, and resolution. Each is a small-scale representation of a grand, wide-ranging prayer of supplication. As a composer, performer, and researcher of early music, writing for cembalo allows me not only to express my special connection to the instrument and the period in which it flourished, but also to present its contemporary dimensions as a rich and versatile instrument. The piece was composed at the request of Hagai Yodan, who performs it with great skill. Daniel Akiva is a composer, performer, and educator whose performances on guitar and lute have won great acclaim. Mr. Akiva graduated from the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem in 1981, where he studied classical guitar with Haim Asulin and composition with Haim Alexander. In 1987 he completed his studies at the Geneva Conservatorium in Switzerland where he studied lute with Jonathon Rubin and composition with Jean Ballisa. For many years, he headed the Music Department at the WIZO High School for the Arts in Haifa, which he founded in 1986, and served as the Artistic Director of the Guitar Gems Festival from 2006-2019. As part of his work at WIZO High School, he has developed a method for teaching free improvisation that has been incorporated into the music program at the school. Mr. Akiva has appeared in concert as a guitarist and lutist and given master classes in Israel, Europe, Russia, the United States, and Latin America. Daniel Akiva’s compositional output includes works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, choir, voice and guitar, piano, and chamber orchestra. His works have been recorded on twelve CDs, the latest of which, Malchut, was issued by OR-TAV in 2014. A native of Haifa whose family has lived in Israel for over five hundred years, he was steeped in the Sephardic (Jewish-Spanish) tradition from his youth. Much of his compositional output has been devoted to a dialogue with the music of the Sephardic Jews. Daniel Akiva has also maintained a creative dialogue over many years with the poets and writers Amnon Shamash, Rivka Miriam, and Avner Peretz.
