The Atar Trio Performs To the Bird from a Distant Land

The Jerusalem-based Atar Piano Trio, directed by pianist Ofer Shelley, commissioned a trio, To the Bird from a Distant Land, for their  program celebrating the 150th birthday of  iconic poet Hayim Bialik.  Rather than create a song, I composed a piano trio inspired by his touching poem To the Bird, The bird forms the connecting link from the narrator’s home in the harsher climate of Europe, to the land of Israel, though his location is mentioned only elliptically, and that of the ‘hot land,’ by the reference to Zion. While the narrator nonetheless wonders whether some of the difficulties of his current situation are to be found in Israel as well, the dream of this land, and the hope for a peaceful, welcoming existence there are central. The bird functions as a symbol of Bialik’s flights of imagination.