I talked to Chris Munce about All is Mere Breath, Hebrew as a choral language generally, and my composing approach and plans. It was a fun time. Check it out on YouTube: 

There's a new review up of my Navona album of “All is Mere Breath” as part of Gramophone Magazine's February issue:

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/weininger-all-is-mere-breath

I'm delighted and honored to say that it's all I could have hoped for. The reviewer clearly gets what I was trying to do with the piece and thinks that I've succeeded in doing that. I wrote it hoping it could bridge some of 2020's terrible gaps and make us feel less alone in our experience, and here I am feeling less alone reading about how someone else perceived it. Feeling grateful, and now determined to “send out my bread upon the waters” some more.

Happy 2024, everyone. May it be a year of meaningful musicmaking for all of us.

Just before the end of last year, I got the great news that my piece "Lecha Dodi", a setting of the classic Hebrew poem that compares the Sabbath metaphorically to a beautiful bride, had won the Cincinnati Camerata's 2023 Composition Contest. The Cincinnati Camerata will premiere the piece in their spring concert on Sunday, April 28, at 3 PM in the historic Isaac M. Wise Temple in downtown Cincinnati. I plan to make the trip to attend and I'd love to see you there if you're in the area!

It's finally out, after a long and winding and very educational road. The album of my cantata “Hakol Hevel” is now officially, fully released by Navona Records and available for streaming and digital purchase from all major services through: https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6587/

Please do check it out. It's the most meaningful and ambitious thing I've written yet and the journey of writing it and getting it performed and recorded has been a key formative experience in my life. I hope it can bring solace and catharsis and a sense of belonging to more people now, in what continues to be an unsettling and sometimes isolating time.

Exciting things coming up in the next week. As mentioned previously, Sacred and Profane will be premiering the SATB version of “Oseh Shalom” tonight in Berkeley-- along with tomorrow in SF and Sunday in Santa Rosa. IOCSF, meanwhile, will have my “Hanukkah Blessings” on our program, also tonight in Berkeley and tomorrow in SF, and December 10 in Healdsburg as well. sacredandprofane.org and iocsf.org have the details respectively.

And in advance of the full release of the “All is Mere Breath” album from Navona Records, we have a single release, of movement II: “How she sits alone”. This is a very special movement to me because it's where the whole conception of the piece began: with my reading Lamentations in 2020 and realizing how relevant that opening lament could be to the COVID experience. It's available right now from all the major streaming services via https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6587/. Enjoy!