ABOUT THE PIECE

Aviary: Concerto for Koto, Violoncello and Orchestra

1. A Trembling of Finches

2. A Conspiracy of Ravens

3. A Pitying of Turtledoves

4. A Booby of Nuthatches

5. An Exultation of Skylarks

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Birds, I learned from my son when he was six, are descended directly from dinosaurs, whose language is lost to us. Or is it? Perhaps, over millions of years of evolution, Nature recognized the fact that the fragility and false specificity of spoken language impeded rather than facilitated communication and gave dinosaurs what the poet Heinrich Heine called “wings of song” and the ability not just to express themselves more articulately in song, but to fly? Certainly, when I was a boy, I chose to become a composer because I recognized that music speaks directly to the soul; I intuited that, while the “meaning” of words could be twisted, that music’s “abstractness” allowed one to express the truth without fear of being misunderstood. The great irony is that, once one’s song has been sung, it is impossible to tell whether one was “understood.”

I have composed my most meditative and introspective works for Duo YUMENO for a decade now. The result has been an hour-long cycle of duos for them (which they have recorded for Naxos) based on the great Heike story called Heike Quinto. The final work incorporates fixed media to further explore the sonic and timbral potential of the pairing of Koto and Violoncello. The natural next step in the evolution of our collaboration is Aviary, a double concerto that casts the duo as pairs of different sorts of birds. The music that they play is based on the songs of finches, ravens, turtledoves, nuthatches, and skylarks. Throughout, the orchestra serves as a sort of human soul trying to understand what the birds are singing about, hearing everything, intuiting and feeling much, and, in the end, possibly learning that it understands nothing.

DUO YUMENO

New York based koto / shamisen player and singer Yoko Reikano Kimura and cellist Hikaru Tamaki create a singular fusion sound, inspired by tradition but with a contemporary sensibility. Duo YUMENO’s repertoire includes a dynamic range of compositions – both traditional and contemporary – all of which explore the dialogue between classical Japanese and western music. In 2014, they were awarded the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program grant, and in 2015, received the Aoyama Baroque Saal Award. Their activities have been featured in the media, like the New York Times, Chamber Music Magazine, New York Classical Review, the Japan Times, Hōgaku Journal and NPR. A proponent of contemporary music, the duo has commissioned new works that blends the Eastern and Western traditions to composers including Toshi Ichiyanagi, Daron Hagen, Marty Regan, Yoko Sato, Elizabeth Brown, Takuma Itoh and Kaito Nakahori. In 2015 the duo embarked on a project to commission a suite of pieces based on The Tale of Heike – one of the masterpieces of Japanese literature – to the eminent American composer, Daron Hagen. The complete recording of the commissioned pieces, Heike Quinto has been released by the Naxos label.

• Learn more about Duo YUMENO here.

• Learn more about INTERWOVEN here.

INTERWOVEN

Exploring tradition to find a new path in our current social climate.

Interwoven is an ensemble whose mission is to bring together sounds from different places and times. The ensemble name derives from the idea that music making is like creating a tapestry, woven together from threads that represent and celebrate diverse origins, traditions, and materials.

Creation of INTERWOVEN was my reaction to the social climate change that occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a descendant of an Asian heritage, I was saddened by the news of racial injustice towards the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders community— but what was even more shocking to me was the lack of response from other racial groups, as well as hesitation to speak up amongst my fellows. I felt that our voices were not heard, and realized that I had to start searching for peaceful ways to stand up for ourselves. Learn more about INTERWOVEN here.

PROJECT SPECIFICATIONS