Part 2

What role do electronic tools and instruments play for your creative process? What does your creative space / studio look like and what tools does it contain?

With electronics, I often like to explore soundscapes. Music is visual to me and it arrives as an image of some sort, sometimes abstract, sometimes fully formed. Electronics give me another way to move inside those inner visions. Inspiration can spring from a piano line, or just as easily from a patch on a synth.

The first piece I wrote for IMA came to mind fully and I recorded a quick, basic sketch on a software synth on my portable setup during lockdowns of 2020. I knew it was a string quartet all along – in my mind the voices were already orchestrated. That sketch became the suite Toda al Hakol, the seed that ignited everything.



My studio is minimal but intentional. I have a Voyager signed by Bob Moog, a CS-80 inspired replica called Deckard’s Dream, a modular rack, a few rare acoustic instruments, guitars, piano. The signal runs through Neve, Shadow Hills, into an Apogee. For IMA’s piano, Justin brought in a Grace unit along with vintage mics to keep the sound transparent and true. I like combining both analog and digital worlds.

I move between two spaces. One is open, filled with sunlight, a big window and trees. The space itself is resonant, with an old baby grand piano that has always reminded me of Beethoven’s in the Wien Museum in Vienna. Much of IMA was written there, including the piano part for Requiem which we ended up recording there too.

The other is my soundproof studio with a felt Petrof piano. It has a warmer, intimate sound – you can hear it on Od Daka Ve Nochtim or Epilogue and the others.



I designed STUDIO111 from the ground up so I could immerse myself fully, not knowing if it was day or night. To listen deeply, without interruption. To give myself entirely to the work.

It is my impression that adding a conceptual, non-musical dimension to one's work is almost a prerequisite for commissions and grants. How do you view this tendency and how “conceptual” is your own approach to writing?

As for commissions and grants, I’ve always made my living from them - mostly film, scoring, as well as some theater and dance. But when it comes to my own concert music, I don’t follow any obligation to “concepts” or to appease anyone. The word itself feels overrated, and when used arbitrarily it often opens the door to mediocrity.

When I go to a gallery and see a Van Gogh, I don’t need a lecture about what the artist intended. While it can be useful at times to know intentions etc, I prefer to leave space for the audience - to exist within the music, to experience it in their own way. For me, music is an experience, not a thesis.

I do enjoy exploring musical theories and discovering my own systems but to me that is not concept but simply part of the process. In Requiem I took my mother’s name, Osnat Sagiv (born Sabina Perelman). The music wrote itself from there.



German musical nomenclature gave me the letters, the code, but it became something else and unfolded naturally in a way I could hear. It is strictly  syllabic and moved like a fractal from the lowest harmonic ground through all the voices, horizontally and vertically –  cyclical in nature , which yielded interesting discoveries.

The music felt writing itself on its own volition. Latin and Hebrew lyrics were combined and interwoven, breaking away from the traditional expected Requiem form. After being present at her passing, with Requiem I cared most about musically following the soul’s journey and those visions of the soul roaming, from the moment of death to departure, flight, to return - rebirth.

Working with long forms, complex concepts or new vocabulary is potentially more challenging today because they require us to remember things that happened perhaps minutes ago – while most of us are finding it hard to focus even on what's happening right now. Both as a composer and as a listener yourself, how do you deal with this?

Yes, that's true. For me it’s about presence and focus.

One of the most important things is keeping the act of writing and playing intentional, focused and sacred. I remove distractions completely, put the phone away, notifications off, and give the music my full attention.  

Even a ten minute meditation or a walk in nature makes a difference. But, coffee first.

For many artists, life-changing musical experiences take place live. Few works these days, however, are performed beyond their premiere. What, do you feel, does this mean for composers, and the music they write, and how does this reality influence your own work?

The power of live music is irreplaceable. With full-orchestra orchestral work you’re tied to the format, programming, and commissions. With chamber groups or I should say, contemporary ensembles there is more freedom. A string quartet can tour in ways a full orchestra can’t, financially or logistically. So yeah, that opens some more mobility and flexibility.

I’ve explored this with ACME, with Roomful of Teeth, and in Cologne with contrabass flutist Daniela Mars for Łódź II.

The constellation of say a solo instrument with electronics allows another kind of space. The approach in writing and production is much different of course from a full orchestra, the color palette you are working with is different. I do intend to work more with full orchestras in the future, both for my solo work and for film scores.

How, would you say are live performances of your music and your recording projects connected at the moment? How do they mutually influence and feed off each other?  

Live and recorded keep feeding each other – sometimes even within the writing itself. Toda Al Hakol – Mvt IV was written only for voices. Some of the singers in Cologne had heard the recorded version, but as I was conducting it live the piece revealed itself differently, more expansive.

The feel, the tempo, was also shaped by the brutalist church by Gottfried Böhm, with its resonance and reverb, bringing it closer to what I had imagined while writing it.

With Łódź II, Daniela and I first performed and recorded live in Brazil at the Salão Leopoldo Miguez Hall in Rio, then later in Köln with Sebastian Sanchez. That process alone kept carving the piece, refining it until the resonance of the Köln church gave it its final form. The brutalist space in Köln reshaped the piece – I re-wrote it with the space and acoustics in mind. When we returned, it felt as though the space, the sound, and the meaning had merged into one.

Live performance always brings the challenge of balance, and the details in the score dialed in, but it also opens new ground. With Toda Al Hakol – Mvt III, ACME Quartet naturally played it with less vibrato, more dry compared to the album, which suits the piece well and in that moment of my life.



Once Roomful of Teeth joined in, I worked closely with Cameron Beauchamp and re-wrote parts specifically for them.

They added their own interpretations, and I felt inspired to add new passages, harmonies, and textures – even lyrics and Tuvan throat singing specifically for the group and live, which were not on the album. They end on Credo.

To some, the advent of AI and 'intelligent' composing tools offers potential for machines to contribute to the creative process. What are your hopes, fears, expectations and possible concrete plans in this regard?

AI is something I follow closely. I’m part of the Recording Academy’s Advocacy, working to protect artists and copyrights as these technologies evolve.

Too many AI models are being trained on existing music without artists’ consent or compensation – that is theft. The NO FAKES Act is one step toward protecting artists from having their work, voice, or image cloned without permission. It also reaches beyond music, toward identity protection in and of itself for all people.

AI is inevitable, and it is part of evolution. It has powerful uses, and what matters is how we choose to use it – how we integrate creativity. For me, I don’t feel the need to use so-called “smart” tools now. If I ever do, it would be intentional, focused more on sound design within the process, not on composition itself.

There’s room for new tools, and this is part of music’s own evolution. I don’t see it as catastrophic, even though humanity often panics when major technological shifts occur – like the industrial revolution or the advent of print.

The act of music is called playing for a reason. It requires the hands-on element. Used well, technology extends us. Used poorly, it strips away depth and turns art into prompts. Like any tool, AI is a double-edged sword – in the right hands it creates, in the wrong hands it destroys.

Unlike fire or a knife, though, AI is also sentient – and that opens far deeper questions about what is coming.

The Montreux Festival intends to preserve its archive of recordings for future generations. Do you personally feel it's important that everything should remain available forever - or is there something to be said for letting beautiful moments pass and linger in the memories of those that experienced them?

It’s a beautiful thought, what you are saying about preservation, memory and letting go.  

I don’t write with legacy in mind. I write to serve the music, to give something back. What remains is not mine to control.