Composer Mark Eliyahu Muses on "The Ballad of the Weeping Spring"

Where does The Ballad of the Weeping Spring take place? The question hovers over Benny Toraty's Wild East fable, which may unfold in yesteryear's Levant, or perhaps just in fantasyland. Either way, music forms its center. So it's only fitting that Mark Eliyahu's soulful, nostalgic composing uses the "maqam" system of musical modes: "maqam" means "place" in Arabic. In the Eastern classical tradition, modal scales are used to influence one's spi...