“Seashore Knights Trio”: Zecharia Plavin’s Ode to Lifelong Friendship and Heroism
- WOMCO
- Jul 9
- 3 min read
Zecharia Plavin's Composition "Seashore Knights Trio" was awarded the Master Prize in the Original Composition Category of the 2025 Season 2 Music Talent Award.
Biography
I am 69 years old. I play concerts of classical music (alone, with friends and sometimes with orchestras).
I write books of research and of fiction and my other friends edit them and some of my work is published (internationally).
For 34 years I taught in the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, and then one year I worked full load in Kansas University Music school.
I recorded Scriabin, Liszt, Franck, Schumann, Ernest Bloch and Ben Zion Orgad for international labels. I also wrote some plays and three of them were performed.
I wrote quite a lot of music. Some of my music is performed in various places of the globe.
Along the years I received some prizes.
I was born in Vilnius (then Soviet occupied Lithuania) and studied there music and general disciplines in Čiurlionis School of Music and in the local Academy of Music (the Vilnius Conservatoire). In 1977-1987 I studied at the Tel Aviv University Music Academy, and later wrote a doctorate in Hebrew University.
Ben Zion Orgad (1926-2006) and Ron Weidberg oversaw my early compositions written in my mid-age and taught me lot – and now I have to teach myself each day by myself.
I am grateful to my fate to being able to assist my eight piano students to play very well and to achieve international prominence. I hope two others will follow. I am glad and grateful to my fate to assist my other students to advance well and to achieve both good results and develop truly interesting lives.
And – I try to find ideas that would help people overcome hatred (my results are mediocre)
Could you share the inspiration behind "Seashore Knights Trio" and the message you hope to convey through it?
The Seashore Knights is how I imagined the three of us who met in 1963 in the first grade of the Čiurlionis School as heroic adults.
Fortunately, despite the many dramas in our lives, and despite the colossal geopolitical changes in the world, fate has not separated us completely. We continue to meet and play in different countries. I am lucky: my classmates are noble and gifted people.
But that's not all: I imagined as if these were the people with whom we go out to fight for a dignified and fair existence in a geographical area where many people like the ruthless expansion of territory instead of the harmonious coexistence of nations.
Fortunately, I meet such people in Israel, where I live.
The trio consists of two parts - the heroic spirit, the struggle, the injury, the sadness and the restoration of the knightly spirit in the first part, and friendly meetings with dramatic episodes - in the second part.
In the first years we performed this Trio with the Lithuanian violinist Professor Raimondas Butvila and the Lithuanian cellist Professor Edmundas Kulikauskas, and later with the violinist Gilead Hildesheim and the cellist Ella Tovey. I am grateful to all of them for their collaboration.
What was your creative process like while composing "Seashore Knights Trio"? How did you approach the structure and dynamics of the piece?
Gilead Hildesheim, Ella Tovey and I played several concerts that included this Trio in Israel a few years ago, and filmed it unedited in the Annette Selin Concert studio in the southern Tel Aviv.
Mr Shali Boharon was the head of the filming brigade and he oversaw the general balance and image production.
My compositional process is very simple: when the sound of an idea comes to me and I recognize its nature, I tell the story that the idea of that sound asks for.
Would you like to share your experience participating in our competition and anyone you'd like to thank?
Please pass my cordial wishes not only to all laureates of your Competition but also to all people who sent their work to you. I hope to listen to the music your Competition brings to the fore.
Please accept my deep gratitude for your own attention and your good heart, as members of the Jury.
Zecharia Plavin
