All of my life, with my entire heart and soul and mind and body, our G-d of Blessedness inspires me in H-s Service and in Service of Humankind to bring so many works of Art into this world! First through paintings and poetry, now through the fusion of music and poetry and prayer. my faith and love and care pour forth through me and leave their traces in these arts! That the world has forever focused upon how my paintings emanated from my mouth has always puzzled me: I was to express and share my being and I have! Finally when I began seeing with my own eyes how music pours from my feet did I begin to understand the world's curiosity and the true Miracle of our Creat-r of Blessedness Who Provides us with the necessary means to achieve H-s Will! So now what a blast for me myself to witness Music pouring forth from my mouth and feet! All of this while I feel utterly the spirituality and artistry coursing through my body as I offer these works to G-D and to my fellow human beings as we each struggle and flow through this great cosmic and eternal journey!

Does it really matter how Music comes into existence? Does it not all come from the Highest Realms through us?

Throughout my life, from birth in 1940, I have had to discover and invent vehicles and pathways to accomplish what I am to do. At last I have found a process of my own personal choice to climb the mountain of enchantment, to combine my search for more godliness with prayer, with music and with poetry! My mouth and feet become themselves the instruments I must attune with heart and soul. We each aspire in our ways to become the Stradivarius- the most from H-s finest infinite materials! Yet we must each come to realize that G-d has already Created us as H-s Stradivariuses of human orchestra to orchestrate H-s never-ending Harmonious Masterpiece! G-d Forms me as I am to bring us new rhythms, new harmonies, fresh structures, colors, sounds and words of praise!

My composition "Soundmass" explores layers upon layers of sound which totally overcomes my difficulty in pressing more than one key at a time! This experiment was to transform conventional dissonance into harmony! My improvisations are explorations into relationships between harmony and dissonance, peace and strife, mastery and chaos, simplicity and complexity, keyboard mastery and ineptitude, paralysis and expressiveness. "Peace Chorus" carols the word "Peace" in eight languages, within a more traditional musical form.

"My Psalms to Harmony" has words from my epic poem of the same title; both are dedicated to my daughter! From this celebratory earlier work came "Journey" of inquietude resolving into serenity.

"A Lifetime" is a simple, melodious retrospective sigh of my Father's life (and mine). "Torah" rejoices in Biblical spirituality and explores tranquillity by more traditional means. "Unify Me" expresses my yearning and process towards attaining increasing union with Divinity resolving in growing inner peacefulness! "Coming Home" expresses my Father's illustrious life of Service and his physical decline as he prepares to pass into eternity. I sat beside him in the Alzheimer's nursing home as he slept in his wheelchair, age 94, surrounded by other patients. he was a founder of United Cerebral Palsy in 1947!

My oratorio "And I Will Glorify Y-o!" praises and celebrates the glory of G-d of Blessedness. It explores inner processes through which I and many of us struggle, search and yearn as we strive toward fulfillments of our Creat-r's Dream-Plan-Destiny in relation with our human wills and desires. The work portrays through dissonance-and-harmonious-means the processes of transformations we offer G-d as we struggle with our own mortality. It's intent was to be purely celebratory, based upon prayer-texts as libretto. but the work took off and blossomed into much that I my self do not yet fully understand! It may reveal more of my inner life than I had planned. It's own artistic essence was disclosed in a three-second flash to me on the Day of Atonement while I was in prayer. It draws upon and searches and fuses elements from diverse cultures and vocabularies of the world filtered through my own consciousness. The spiritual/music journey resolves, repeats, unfolds the never-ending panoply of praise, glorification and gratitude with which I choose and try to live my life on Earth!

The challenge to express my self musically is so thrilling that my physical difficulties to me seem inconsequential! In 1959, I dreamed of becoming a composer but accepted my handicap. now, computer technology enables my expression. I never forgot my dream and 45 years later I found the specialist in adaptive computer technology, a catalyst who helped provide the keys to music's glory! My challenge is to discover how to conceive, perform, input and acoustically achieve music that transcends the physical technology! In 1994 I began this new grand voyage of discovery!

I started from feeling terrified of touching musical instruments and electronic equipment. Then I overcame frustration of not being able to press a variety of keys simultaneously. I tried sticks, even a banana, and other objects! Now I try a two-pronged stick spaced to play perfect fifths! What fun! As I increase my eye/mouth coordination I work on eye/mouth/feet coordination. What a ride! At times I have incorporated my body's involuntary movements into passages! A palsied pianist?!?! You may truly say: "My foot"!

Robert Rai (right) is a musical genius, kindly and attuned, a Gifted composer, conductor, musician, specialist in computer music technology and a superb music teacher with impeccable classical training and brilliant memory! He was a Suzuki kid and has a sterling future all his own! In 1994 at age 20 Robert began teaching me. I asked him to show me what I needed in order to express my own inner and artistic journey without tampering with my process or compensating aurally for my physical limitations. he watches and facilitates, teaches, criticizes, guides, adapts, programs, acoustically balanced and produced the CD- all while he composes his own extraordinary music through his own independent searchings! Our improvisations are a great joy, spontaneous as they are! They hint at who he is in his own right and how in sync we are while upon our individual respective creative paths.

My greatest joy composing Music is trying to fuse so many diverse elements into one, into Oneness, into Harmony, to celebrate G-d, godliness, Service! We each strive during our lives in our own ways to unify with Divinity, to recover our wholeness, our inner peace, to participate in the Divine Order, to heal what is seemingly broken within us, to rejoice with what we have!

G-d is One; each of us is One; together we are One! We become as we already are! We are upon the path as we explore through finite means the Infinite!

-Steven Sles
Composer

Last Updated: September 21, 2003

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