Oren Boneh: Her Majesty the Fool

Composer and trumpeter Oren Boneh (b. 1991) writes music characterized by its energy and dynamism. As described by Le Monde, his works are distinguished by a “constant tension between two opposing poles – one civilized and the other savage.” The music plays with listener expectations of the characters’  behaviors in order to create unpredictability and friction. Oren’s music has been commissioned and performed internationally by some of Europe and North America’s most renowned ensembles such as the Tana Quartet, Vertixe Sonora, Alarm Will Sound, Proton Bern, Meitar, Loadbang, and Divertimento Ensemble. To his instrumental research is added a passionate taste for electronics, nourished by a year of study and research at IRCAM in Paris. Based in Brussels, Oren completed his PhD in composition at the University of California, Berkeley in 2020.

Her Majesty the Fool is a work for microtonal accordion and electronics written for accordionist Fanny Vicens. Boneh writes: Like in much of my recent work, I was inspired to pair musical characters belonging to vastly different worlds and to discover unexpected overlap among them. When placed alongside one another, each of these opposing characters gives the others greater meaning, resulting in an absurd and energetically irreverent musical universe. In working with Fanny and her specially-tuned accordion, I was moved by the vintage and immersive sound that can result from combining the various de-tuned registers. As a result of the contrast between the vintage character and the brutally industrial textures of the beginning, a broken music-machine emerges.