"Sounds of Siday: Side B", by Stephen Horenstein

This project was born out of “homage” to the most famous jingle writer in history of radio and television. He was also the first to bring electronic music to the wide American culture (TV and Radio). More people heard his music on a daily basis than any other. He was the highest paid musician per second on record. His name? Eric Siday.

Composer Stephen Horenstein was responsible for digitizing Siday’s archive, then placing it in Lincoln Center and The New York Public Library. It was the first electronic music archive ever to be digitised there.

For ten years, Horenstein headed a program of fellowships to musical creators who “think out of the box”. The Siday Fellowship for Musical Creativity provided university tuition to some of Israel’s musical talent.

In gratitude, Horenstein and one of the fellowship recipients Matan Daskal decided to propose an unusual piece to the Israel Festival. And so, “Sounds of Siday” was premiered in December 2020. The performance was also broadcast on world internet and locally.

The piece works from time present to time past. Hence Side B is being released first. It features Siday’s narration (the importance of a mother’s heartbeat for humans). When a baby is born he /she is suddenly thrust into the world, but it’s the mother’s heartbeat continues to heal.

We (like the baby) are thrown into our busy world. it was similar when a super-saturated world of advertising (late 50’s and 60’s) when Americans were asked to “buy, buy, buy”. It was a “mitzvah” to buy “for America”.

Advertising was expensive. As more content was injected into advertisements, the relatively short jingle/tv/radio ad seemed longer…amazing amounts of stimuli were packed into a short time.

The sub theme of Sounds of Siday: Side B is the notion of time. In his PhD thesis Horenstein proved that time slows down (psychologically) when saturated with information! When audiences are exposed to such saturation over longer periods of time, the sense of time is altered by a semi-hypnotic trance. After this experience the listener is also “cleansed”.

In Horenstein’s Sounds of Siday : Side B, this journey in time is followed by a solo female voice (sung by Eliana Lila), who brings us back to our true selves..

Horenstein feels that his music can be an emotional cleansing, an exorcism of sorts, to help us recover from saturation of our lives, including the traumas of war. After being entrenched for months, we are encouraged to return to the simplicity, our true center”, calmed and cleansed.

The piece is written for two orchestras The Lab Orchestra and Castle in Time Orchestra.
Side B was conducted by Stephen Horenstein.

Side B was made possible by a grant from Mihal Ha Pais.

Side B Album release 2nd/3rd week of February.
Side A will be released in Spring/Summer