Portrait

Adaya Godlevsky

Born in Jerusalem, 1974.
As an interdisciplinary artist, Adaya uses the harp as her main motif across several art activates such as composing music, performance, directing, singing and creating artistic collaborations with artist from different fields.
Adaya's education includes the "Nisan Native" studio for theater and performance, "Rimon" music school and various composition master classes with Prof. Oded Zehavi, Arik Shapira and more.
Adaya music abilities range from classic music to experimental and improvisation, composing poetry, playing and singing.
Adaya created and performed at festivals and events at theaters, music centers, music clubs, museums, and numerous art galleries around the world.

>> Website Adaya Godlevsky
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Interview

Hélène Breschand: I'm very interested by your sculptural installation made of threads ! Can you tell me how you arrive in the world of sculptural installation ?

Adaya Godlevsky: The installation-performance “A Lead” was created and premiered in 2018, as part of Musrara Mix Festival, Jerusalem. In “A Lead” I invite the audience to perceive the concept of the Musrara Mix Festival, Uncertainty, as an opportunity rather than a concept that arouses fear. I request freedom of expression and plurality from the audience. The visitors are asked to write or paint on paper any meaning, feeling or thought that they have in the gallery space.
In this space I created a large thicket of wires that stretch between the walls of the building. This allows penetration into the work, and an opportunity to reflect, gaze and imagine through the games of light and shadow, patches and lines, and the illusion of volume.
The audience is asked to give their texts and drawings to me and I improvise a musical interpretation of the visitor’s reaction using harp, voice and electronics.
With “A Lead” my wish is to respond to a reality that does not accept the “other”.  Whether it is a refugee seeking asylum, the repeated use of the concept of the “Chosen People" or an attempt to censor and silence any factor that may evoke questions and weaken absolute certainty.
The work “A Lead” was presented in different variations in the Loving Art Making Art event in Tel Aviv, 2019, and as part of the Sala-Manca group’s Heara 13 in April 2020.

>>> ++ Photos and vidéos «A Lead» <<<

HB: what do you want to transmit to the public, through theses installations ?

AG: As an artist, I want to give something to the audience, to have something happen to them, for them to have an experience, emerge with thoughts and questions in the wake of my work.
In “A Lead”, the audience is an essential part of the work; without them the music doesn’t play; it’s kind of a chain of inspirations: the wire and harp installation invites the audience to react to it, they react and create in text and drawing, and then give me materials and inspiration for my improvisation. The wire installation comes alive and gains additional meanings when there is an active audience; there is a reciprocal movement that is crucial for the existence of the work

HB: can you explain your set up with electronic ? it's always the same ? What are you looking for with the electronics that the acoustic harp does not bring you ?

AG: The electronics that I connect to the harp is a multi-effects device designed for the guitar, and I study it and adapt it to the sounds of the harp. At the moment I’m concentrating on playing with these electronics, and in the future, I’d like to expand my electronic tools with the harp and the singing.
It’s interesting, because the constraint has given rise to a lot of new possibilities. Because I only play the lever harp, my chromatic possibilities with the harp are sometimes restricted, and the electronics open up a new realm.
I think I also started singing because of this limitation; I wanted more sonic possibilities and the voice and the singing came out naturally in dialogue with the harp.
Maybe in the future I’ll go back to the pedal harp, but at the moment there seems to still be plenty of exploration and discovery and the “constraint” is turning into many advantages.
(Another advantage is the size of the lever harp, which allows to me to move physically with the harp, in my stage works)
I’m also not in a rush to play an electric harp, because the wooden sound box is crucial for me, also because of its structure and material, which invites interesting playing techniques and sounds, such as tapping or singing and vocalizing into it.

HB: what I really like about your work are two singular and unique (or very rare) paths: artistic installations, and musical theater. Ccan you talk about these two parts of your work: what are you looking for in each of them ? how they relate to each other ?

AG: I like to define myself as interdisciplinary; it’s true that my artistic pursuits are multidisciplinary: theater, performance and music, but what interests and drives me is the connection and combination between them.
I also enjoy creating and performing in each discipline separately, composing, improvising, singing, playing, acting or doing a performance without music. But the exploration that drives me and is natural to me involves the combinations between the disciplines. And it is certainly a great gift to be able to move among the different artistic fields, between “the visual” and “the audible” and in the dialogue between them.

Looking back at my years of artistic activity, now, in 2021, I think that as a creative artist I am getting farther away from “figurative” theater and drawing nearer to and more connected with the world of performance, which for me is a more abstract world, closer to music. Each performance has the audience and the action, such as playing, or moving, speaking and listening (which is also an active undertaking). The question is what I want to say and give the audience and how I can do it in the form and way most right for me.

For instance, in 2010 I made a stage work based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The work moved between theater and performance, a monologue by Eurydice who decides to escape the underworld on her own and not be depended on the gaze or non-gaze of Orpheus, and this time it is she who plays the harp! The monologue was composed based on Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke and Letters to Orpheus by Anat Sharon-Blais.

And in my last stage work “Women, border In front of you” from 2018 there was no text, only harp, electronics, movement and voice. The performance examines, among other things, my relationship with the harp.

>>> More informations, images and sounds for "Woman, border in front of you !" <<<

Both works feature feminine content and voice, a stage, movement, singing and the harp. There are combinations between the different disciplines. However, something has happened over the years.

HB: Can you speak about your compositions: what are you looking for ? how do you write ? your influences ? your inspirations ? the type of writing (graphic ? or ...)

AG: My compositions depend on the project or the set-up; composing for ensembles and for a changing group of instrument, for the harp, harp, voice and/or electronics, for an interdisciplinary musical or artistic project.
My research and exploration in composition changes; sometimes it can remain as a musical piece with all that that entails, and sometimes it can develop into a performance.
My inspiration for composing can be an image, a picture, a text (mostly poetry), a place, the player/ensemble I’m composing for. Additional inspiration comes from various musicians, composers and improvisers.
Sometimes I compose in traditional scoring, mostly in guided improvisation, graphic scoring and text.

An example of graphic notation: as part of The Poetry Lab project at the Ceramics and Glass Department, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, I was invited to create an exhibition based on text/letters and I chose to create an exhibition of graphic notation called YOUR EYE HEARS.
The graphic notation comprises an image and a text of listening instructions. (>> Attached here is some of the score in a version for exhibition visitors and a version for playing the harp<< ). At the exhibition opening I played the graphic notation from the exhibition, in a version for harp and electronics:

HB: How do you built your solo ? with the theatrical dimension ?

AG: When I devise a stage work and/or a solo performance, what determines my choices and the creative process are the following: (in changing order depending on the work) the subject, the meaning of the work, what I wish to say and give, the physical place where the work will take place, the dialogue with the audience – whether it will be frontal or interactive, the colors, the shapes, the sounds, sometimes I rely on a myth, a story, a painting, I examine the actions on stage with and without the harp.
Through rehearsals, searching, trial and exploration I build a progression and score for the performance. At certain stages in the process, I consult with artist friends and when necessary, collaborate with professionals such as a sound person, a lighting technician, a costume designer and an artistic adviser.

HB: Do you teach ? Do you transmit the music that you create, and all these new ways of playing?

AG: I mostly teach music in educational contexts for gifted and outstanding children. I don’t teach them to play the harp; these are music classes that combine interdisciplinarity and creativity, so that the range of subjects that I teach is diverse, and includes sound waves, musical elements, music and inspiration, the connection between color and music, graphic notation, improvisation and music and environment. Sometimes I bring the harp to the classes, and it helps me make different musical subjects accessible to the children, such as the structure and possible sounds of string instruments. Sometimes the children write me graphic notation and I perform their pieces, so they experience composition and scoring.
I teach the children content that comes from my own artistic path and I’m glad for the opportunity to meet and teach the children on the basis of what I believe in, such as pluralism, creative thinking, creativity and personal expression.

These days, due to the corona virus, I meet the children for Zoom classes, and this constraint, with all the difficulty, also carries some advantages – the children create and share from their domestic and familial environment, which has been turned into an instructive and joyful musical playground.
My place as an artist and a teacher allows me to be in dialogue with the world, to create a reciprocal movement of giving and taking with my audience and my pupils, a vital movement of breath, development and growth.
The harp has a central part in this movement and flow, and I’m thankful for that.

HB: can you speak about your music school : the "Nisan Native" studio for theater and performance, and "Rimon" music school it's for musicians ? what kind of artists do they train ? (these kind of school don't exist in France, what's a pity !)

AG: Nissan Nativ is just a theater school. During my studies I took a break from music and concentrated on studying acting and the theater. After graduating from there, I realized I missed the harp and music and wanted to combine the disciplines. So I went back to making and studying music at the Rimon School and with private teachers and focused on composition; all the while taking part in interdisciplinary artistic projects.
I think that once I realized that I was combining music and the stage I began to establish my artistic path and language. The art schools gave me knowledge and tools and the beginning of an experience, but for me, the significant learning happens through making and creating, through dialogue and collaborations with artists from different fields. I’ve collaborated with directors, choreographers, actors, dancers, plastic artists and of course musicians… Only once I’ve had a project to create and be part of, have I felt that the learning was significant and that I was developing in it.

I chose to study at institutions with a very specific artistic definition, theater separately and music separately. Probably the separation allowed me to connect the fields on my own, to keep developing and exploring the movement between them, and over the years to find my own unique path.
It’s interesting, because over the years, the interdisciplinary approach has become more and more present in academies and art schools. My musician friends teach at design and visual art academies. In several universities, students from various art departments create through collaboration, and of course in schools that define themselves in advance as interdisciplinary, such as The School of Visual Theater in Jerusalem, or Musrara School of Art, where the New Music department also deals with sound installations and performance.

Photo: Lilach Raz