Playtime (Mr. Hulot Evoque)
for trombone and chamber ensemble

The work has been written for the trombonist Benny Sluchin and is dedicated to him and to the Israel Contemporary Players Ensemble. The title of the work and the content of its movements follow freely the memory I have of Jaques Tati's superb film PLAYTIME. This is Tati's most daring and abstract experiment of his films built around the person of Monsieur Hulot, a most unique comically philosophic character. The work is divided, as is Tati's film, into four parts, played attacca in which there occur various confrontations between the soloist and the ensemble. In the first there is an unsuccessful try to integration and at decoding the ensemble's behavior that acts as a machine whose working method is unknown. The second attempts to clarify the state between full consciousness leading to clearly defined result and that of a state of far diminished awareness which borders on hallucination. The third brings forth dance rhythms from the realm of light music and night clubs, in a combination which, inevitably, brings about a sorry result. The fourth and closing movement of the work on the one hand clarifies to some extent the hidden tonal principles of the preceding movements while on the other, it represents a short musical carousel which climbs upward until it finally disappears. Here the soloist and the ensemble reach complete harmony yet infinite musical patterns still leaves the situation unresolved. (Composer's note)