Shekhinah (2026) for clarinet and piano
-Commissioned by the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival
-Premiered at the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival on August 19th, 2025

Program Listing

Shekhinah (2026)

Program Notes

Shekhinah is a Hebrew word for the Divine Presence—the light of holiness that dwells among us. It evokes a sacred energy that surrounds all beings, linking the earthly to the spiritual.

I’ve increasingly turned toward tradition and ceremony not only as an expression of my own Jewish identity, but as a lens on the present. We live in a medieval moment—an age of faith in the unseen and distrust of the evident, the provable, the scientific—where devotion to imagined communities often eclipses independent thought and action. To that end, I sought to draw on the musical language of medieval composers while leaning into the meditative and mystical aspects of Hebrew chant.

Shekhinah opens in reverent awe and gradually builds in pace and intensity toward moments of ecstatic joy. It returns to stillness at the end—but in that return suffused with a quiet hope.

The piece was written for Romie de Guise-Langlois and Dr. Gloria Chien with admiration and gratitude.