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The Son of Life Praised

A solo ritual performance adapted from Abraham Abulafia's mystical practices, combining Hebrew letter permutations, live vocalization, and computer-generated angelic voices.

About the Performance

The Son of Life Praised is a solo ritual performance adapted from the writings of the thirteenth-century Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia. Premiered at the Mills College Signal Flow Festival in Oakland on March 11, 2016, the work explores musical creation, ecstatic experience, and Jewish mystical practices through voice, computer-generated sound, and ritual movement.

The performance adapts Abulafia'sHokhmath ha-Tseruf, the science of the combination of letters, into a musical meditation. I systematically combine Hebrew consonants and vowels through vocalization, receiving responses from synthetic angelic voices implemented in SuperCollider. The exchange between the live voice and its electronic counterparts forms the musical structure of the performance.

The audience encounters the ritual indirectly, seeing only the shadow of my head as I perform the meditation. At intervals, I prostrate myself on the floor, causing my shadow to disappear from view. The restricted visual presentation places the emphasis on the relationship between voice, its electronic responses, and the physical acts of the ritual.

Research Context

The work emerged from my efforts to develop a personal musical practice grounded in Jewish mysticism. It formed the practice-based component of my MA thesis,Casting Lines to Another Music: Strategies for Musical Prophecy, completed at Mills College in 2016.

The thesis examines relationships between musical improvisation, meaningful ritual, and mystical approaches to creation. It places The Son of Life Praisedin conversation with Musica Elettronica Viva'sSpacecraft, considering both works as distinct approaches to musical creation through ecstatic ritual.