Yossi Mar Chaim

I was born 1940 in Jerusalem and the first sounds that I seem to remember were combinations of 2nd world  war sirens and bag pipe orchestras that used to march under the family building once a year on king George the 5th birthday until the year of independence, 1948.

As  a child I loved big sounds; especially building sounds, quarries (I think my father owned one) the call ‘barud’ (بارود - arabic for dynamite) every time the builderes warned passers by of a coming explosion. The most ecxiting sound came from the printing press of the ”Palestine Post” daily which became “The Jerusalem post” after 1948. We had an old radio with a few records, hebrew and classical, which I memorized, scratches included. The text and scratches were important, even now, no less then the melodies.

My mother bought a piano on which I played mostly folk and war songs by ear, with no harmonies. I hated reading scores and practising so I stopped studying  after 18 months and returned to discipline at the age of 20.

In the mean time I developed mad love for rock n' roll and later to jazz. The Jordanian powerful station “Radio Ramalla” was the main source of pop songs, since the Israeli radio stations did very little about it in the 50's. Later I discovered the ”Voice of America“ short wave jazz program, directed to eastern europe -2 hours a day, and never missed a date.  Albums started to arrive at the record shops and so did immigration to Israel of professional players from everywhere and suddenly there was a scene; I was on the way to graduation in mathematics when I decided to learn jazz piano with Israel's top pianist Danny Gotfried and enrolled to Rubin Academy to study with the great musician Prof. Yzchak Saday. I studied double bass as well .Little by little composing musuc became more imprtant than playing jazz, especially after two years of studies at Julliard scl. Of  Music in N.Y. and listening to the godly talents of 1967. Coming back to Israel I started teaching and composing , making my living writing for theatre, movies ,dance and whatever I could do, never refusing a job.

I never forgot my pop  roots and most of my works were led by the idea of mixing high and low culture. Old Russian tunes appeared in serial compositions ,etc… My electronic works were always lo-fi. Starting the new millennium I shifted my central interest in raw sounds, my first love. In 2008 my life partner, artist Michal Naaman and I produced a joint piece called “The Loudest Points” which was constructed from a huge cardboard copy of one of  her “fish bird” collage paintings in which 2 reel-to-reel tapes played a 30 feet loop with a recording of tennis match by the great players M. Sharapova and V. Williams. The loop caressed the painted figures and was the first of many looped works done with the help of my son, Guido, who became a lo-fi reconstructing and recording expert.

Most of my works are performed in the "Zimmer", a Tel Aviv noise club. We either use home appliances like fans, electric toothbrushes, carrot graters, vacuum cleaners, etc.The other line is mostly complicated loops formats with live recordings.

I owe a lot to people who believed in my work when I doubted it ( and still does…), first to my son, Guido, my sound partner since his sixth birthday, my life partner, Michal Naaman since 1980 and to composer Joan Franks Williams who gave me a free stage for 9 years and director and actress Naomi Yoeli who chose me to be her musician since 2005.