Akiko Yamane - Glittering Pattern

Biography

Akiko Yamane

Born in Osaka in 1982.

Yamane, in her own words, “[tries] to create music using the concept of "visible sound" as a figurative art. The phenomenon of sound is in fact invisible, but as it is experienced as installation art, I strive to enable the listener to trace the outlines of sound movement and feel shapes, colors, textures and the space beside them in their own inner perception.”

Yamane studied composition at the Kyoto City University of Arts with Hinoharu Matsumoto from 2001-2007, and at Hochschule für Kuenste Bremen with Younghi Pagh-Paan from 2005-2006 as an exchange student. Yamane also studied composition with Motoharu Kawashima privately. She participated in a Composition Master Course in Akiyoshidai's Summer (2003), at the Composers Forum in Tokyo (2004), in the Takefu international music festival (2005, 2007 as an invited composer), and at Royaumont Voix Nouvelles in France (2006).

Yamane’s numerous awards and grants include the Meiji Yasuda quality of life scholarship (2004), the Kyoto Musical Association prize (2005), a finalist of the Takefu Composition Award (2005), the Togashi Prize of the 22nd JSCM Award for Composers (2005), 1st Prize of the Music Competition of Japan (2006), and the Akutagawa Prize (2010). 

Her works have been performed in Tokyo, New york City, Paris, Bremen and commissioned by the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Izumi Sinfonietta Osaka and many ensembles and players. She organizes experimental music events “eX.” with composer Motoharu Kawashima in Tokyo from 2007. She staged a sound installation “Dots Collection No.06” in Kyoto, 2011.

 Glittering Pattern

(by the composer herself) 

This piece is made up of glittering "continuums."  

To me, a musical continuum is a seemingly infinite and static strand of music that, 

upon close inspection, is actually glittering with activity. 

Such continuums are packed to the brim of a frame. 

In this piece, the framework is the temporal constraint of one minute, 

 and the continuums are free to form patterns within this frame.

The material of the continuums is derived from one passage of a Philip Glass piece. 

 I sampled a string of arpeggios from the passage, 

deconstructed it by statistically analyzing its motion, 

reconstructed it, and then ornamented the resulting material.

I sculpted this piece with a sense of joy and 

also with feelings of great respect and admiration toward Philip Glass.

Glittering Pattern was written for Nicolas' captivating project.

Mamoru Fujieda 藤枝守 - Gamelan Cherry

Biography

Mamoru Fujieda

A leading figure of Japan's postminimalism movement, Mamoru Fujieda was born in 1955 and first studied composition at the Tokyo College of Music, then received his Ph.D. in music from University of California, San Diego in 1988. Fujieda is internationally recognized as one of music's outstanding younger composers. Working with artists such as John Zorn, Yuji Takahashi, and Malcolm Goldstein, he composes music that emerges from his fascination with the essentially collaborative formation of music. Fujieda has developed methods of composition that depart from the minimalist tradition, charting a new terrain that liberates music from subjectivity by immersing it in a network of relationships.
Among his numerous methods, he has pioneered a new structure of composition that he calls "parasitic," since it consists of grafting new material onto a "rhizome" of original melody borrowed from sources such as Bach, Gregorian chant, or medieval secular music. Whether working with the Butoh dancer Setsuko Yamada to produce sound sculptures that emerge from a mutual reaction between the dancer and objects that she touches, or reading the minute electrical currents flowing through an orchid to express nature's undulations, Fujieda's work represents an innovative approach that fuses technology to biology, composer to performer, and music to audience. His The Night Chant and the first six collections of Patterns of Plants appear on the TZADIK label.

Gamelan Cherry 

Kazuo Missé 三瀬和朗 （みせ かずお）- Résonance VI

Biography

Kazuo Missé

Kazuo Missé graduated from Tokyo University of the Art with bachelor and master degrees. He studied composition (with Mareo Ishiketa and Yasuo Sueyoshi),piano(with Jun Date) and singing (with Eiko Seyama). In 1986 Missé graduated from École Normale de Musique de Paris where he studied with Yoshihisa Taira. He acquire Diplôme Supérieur. He received first prize at the Gian Battista Viotti International Music Competition in 1986.  Commissionedby the 18th Min-on Contemporary Music Festival,Violin  Concerto “Chant de la mer profonde” was premiered by Devy Erlih(Vn.),Ayako Shinozaki(Hp.) and the New Japan Philharmonic conducted by Yuzo Toyama. Other representative works include Le Temps Profond and L’étoile du firmament gelé. He is currently a professor at Toho Gakuen School of Music.

Résonance VI
(by the composer himself) 

In early February 2014, I composed for this very concert this 

"Homage to Philip Glass", a little variation from a pattern made with

three notes: G = (G), LA = (A), S = es (E flat in German). 

I was very inspired by Philip Glass clear ( transparent) sonority, and this is how this piece was born. 

I am full of impatience to hear the wonderful interpretation of 

Nicolas for this world premiere.

Résonance VI

Osamu Kawakami 川上 統 - GLASS Hopper

Biography

Osamu Kawakami

Osamu Kawakami was born in 1979 in Tokyo. He graduated from the composition department of the Tokyo College of Music in 2003, training and supplemented it with a graduate from the same university in 2005.
He studied composition with Shin-ichiro Ikebe, Toshio Hosokawa, Noriko Hisada, and Hiroyuki Yamamoto.
He won the contest Twentieth Society contemporary Japanese music in 2003.
His piece entitled The Family shark was presented at the Chapelle Saint-Bernard in Paris in 2008. His piece entitled Gatling Johann was presented during the Folle Journée Japan in 2009. Invited international music festival Takefu in 2009, he wins a scholarship to come to exchange Royaumont. He is interested in biodiversity, and wrote plays that are called living beings.

GLASS Hopper

(by the composer himself)

I often feel that music of Phillip Glass has many vitality like living things.

And I also feel it as very very stylish.

My imagination was inspired and it grew imagination of homage as Glass"not grass"hopper.

This music will be jumping,stopping and walking quickly on the keyboard like vitality of his music.

I present this piece with sincerely for my great friend Nicolas Horvath and his great challenge.

drawming by the composer himself