Seiji Choki

Born in Fukuoka Pref-ecture in 1958, Seiji Choki graduated from both Tokyo University and Tokyo University of the Arts. He is now professor at Tokyo University (Branch of Interdisciplinary Art Science) and music critic for Asahi Shimbun, On Stage News, Record-Art and others. He is the author of several books including Drifters of the Modern Music (1993), Lichtzwang von Wolfgang Rihm: Analytische Bemerkungen zu einer Celan-Komposition in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies 3 (1998), History of Japanese-Western Music after World War II (co-author, 2011), and Opera in the 20th Century (2015) to name just a few.

Noriko Koide (featured and commissioned composer)

While Noriko Koide’s (b.1982, Chiba) music uses various compositional styles depending on the theme of each piece, her works can be characterized by the textures and colors formed by the resonance of innovative orchestration, fine musical shapes, and extended techniques.

Koide obtained her master’s degree in composition from Tokyo College of Music (2008), Conservatorium van Amsterdam (2011), and Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag (2014) with the grants from the Rohm Music Foundation (2009-13), Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag (2012-2013), and the Overseas Study Program for Artists provided by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan (2013-14). She studied under Shin-ichiro Ikebe, Sunao Isaji, Masao Endo, Shin Satoh, Yutaka Fujiwara, Akira Fukuda, Toshio Hosokawa, Wim Henderickx, Martijn Padding, and Yannis Kyriakides. She has been interested in the methods of note decoration used in traditional Javanese gamelan music, and studied gamelan performance and its theory at the Institut Seni Indonesia Surakarta, with grants given by the Darmasiswa Indonesian Scholarship Program, and the Nomura Foundation in 2014-15.

She has won the Akutagawa Award for Music Composition (2007) with her Keselanpatharan for orchestra. She has also received: the Audience Award, 2nd place in the 76th Music Competition of Japan, 18th Idemitsu Music Award, and Arion Prize. In the Tongyeong International Music Festival 2016, she won the Asian Composers Showcase’s Goethe-Award and its Audience Award for the premiere of her Hotei. Her works have been performed and picked up by: the New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Sendai Philharmonic Orchestra, Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Tokyo Philharmonic Chorus, Vox humana, Ensemble Genesis, Hiroaki Ooi, Yasuji Ohagi, Kousei Murata, Sumire Yoshihara, Takefu International Music Festival, International Gaudeamus Music Week (Utrecht), Shanghai New Music Week, Music From Japan Festival (New York), Toonzetters (Amsterdam), TV Asahi, NHK Educational, and NHK-FM Gendai no Ongaku (Music of Today). She is currently a member of an avant-garde pop duo, Kishibojin Fumin Girls, and a multi-dimensional art group project that focuses on eroticism, Sukebeningen.

Chiku Komiya (commissioned composer)

Chiku Komiya was born in Kanagawa, Japan, in 1993. He is a graduate of Tokyo University of the Arts with both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Music and Composition (Masters in Music Research) and designs computer works to generate a rethinking of the relationship between composition and performance. In his acoustic compositions, live electronics and sound installations, the act of performing itself engenders a fresh new sense of the player’s body in performance.

Komiya is a recipient of the Second Prize in the 87th Annual Music Competition of Japan, Composition Division, for an orchestral work, Obsessive Paroxysm for Orchestra, while his Nul for Orchestra had its premiere by campus selection at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2015. A solo exhibition of live electronic works entitled We Have to Keep on Swimming was presented at Tokyo Wonder Site (TOKAS) in 2016. Komiya’s VOX-AUTOPOIESIS was published in 2018 by thoasa (available at http://amzn.asia/d/10qNjOx).

https://chikukomiya.com/

Tomoko Fukui

Japanese composer Tomoko Fukui was born in Kyoto. Probing the capabilities of individual instruments, Fukui is consistently pushing volume, register, and performance methods to their farthest boundaries as she pursues the severest extremes of tone qualities and noise. Her compositions always maintain the highest tension with sounds variously described as, for instance, “abounding in texture,” or “edgy.” Yet Fukui is careful to have consideration for the ears of her audience. It is that very unbalance that she sees as the identity of her music and her style.

Fukui has been invited or commissioned by La Biennale di Venezia, Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Music, ECLAT Festival Neue Music Stuttgart, Maelz Music in Berlin, Ars Musica Festival in Belgium, Takefu International Music Festival in Japan, Pan Music Festival in Seoul, among others. Her work has been performed as part of ISCM World Music Days in Hong Kong (2002), Zagreb (2004), Slovakia (2013) and Austria (2013). She also organized the ensemble “next mushroom promotion” which plays mainly contemporary music. In 2005, the ensemble received the Keizo Saji Prize which was established by Suntory Music Foundation and is given to the musician or ensemble that held the most interesting and challenging concert in Japan each year. “next mushroom promotion” was also invited by Musicarama Festival (Hong Kong), Bartok Festival (Hungary), Cervantino Festival (Mexico), Tong-Yong Music Festival (Korea) and more. It was the resident ensemble of Takefu Music Festival from 2008-2012. In 2019 she was elected to the executive committee of ISCM. Fukui is currently based in Tokyo.

Takeo Hoshiya

Born in 1979, Japanese composer Takeo Hoshiya graduated with a doctorate from Tokyo University of the Arts. Along with Jun’ichiro Taku and Tomoki Tai, he co-founded the chamber ensemble Ensemble Bois, which premiered many new pieces in the early 2000s. Hoshiya participated in Ensemble Nomad’s British tour in 2005, won first prize in the 2007 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award, was a guest composer at both the 2010 Takefu International Music Festival and the 2013 Daegu International Musical Festival, participated in the 2014 CAFe Budapest Contemporary Arts Festival in Hungary, and travelled to Canada in 2018 as part of the Japan-Canada Contemporary Music Exchange Project. He is also a member of Ensemble Contemporary α and the Composer Group Path. Since 2010, he and cellist Tomoki Tai have managed the Shape of Time Project group, which has produced concerts and CDs. In addition, he and clarinetist Hideo Kikuchi jointly founded and run a group called “Office Deku.” Hoshiya is an associate professor at Fukui University and lives in Fukui City.

Yu Kuwabara

Tokyo-based composer Yu Kuwabara (b. 1984) makes music to ask herself who she is. She has been researching and studying traditional Japanese arts and music, and has worked with traditional Japanese artists in an effort to go as far back as possible to her origins and confirm her own sense of being. Kuwabara completed her master’s degree at the Tokyo University of the Arts and has taken part in the Darmstadter Ferienkurse, Lucerne Festival Academy Composer Seminar, Academy Voix Nouvelles Foundation Royaumont, implus, and Akademie Schloss Solitude. Her work has been performed by Ensemble Modern, Trio Accanto, Stefan Hussong, Camilla Hoitenga, Claire Chase, Rebekah Heller, William Lang, as well as soloists from Ensemble Intercontemporain, Talea Ensemble, Divertimento Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, and Tokyo Philharmonic. Kuwabara’s work has been performed at major venues in Asia, Europe and the United States. Her scores are published by Edition Wunn, Germany. http://3shimai.com/yu/index_Eng.html

Yuka Shibuya

Yuka Shibuya was born in Kyoto in 1981, and graduated from the composition department of Tokyo University of the Arts in 2012. Her doctoral work focused on microtonal intervals derived from unequal temperament and the use of microtonal intervals as musical resources. In recent years, she has been interested in exploring the relationships between individual tones, and writing many pieces utilizing microtonal intervals and unequal temperament. Her works have been performed in Japan, as well as in Canada, Germany, New York, and Italy by musicians such as Quatour Bozzini, Satoko Inoue, and Kumi Uchimoto. She studied composition with Jo Kondo, Teruyuki Noda, Kunitaka Kokaji and Atsutada Otaka at the Tokyo University of the Arts, where she is currently a lecturer.

Jummei Suzuki

Jummei Suzuki, born in 1970 in Tokyo, obtained both his bachelor’s (1995) and master’s (2000) degrees from the Tokyo University of the Arts, under the guidance of Teruyuki Noda, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Ryohei Hirose and Ichiro Nodaira. From 1997 to 2002 he studied composition with Gerard Grisey and Marco Stroppa, orchestration with Marc-André Dalbavie, and musical analysis with Michaiël Levinas at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. From 1999 to 2001 he received a fellowship from the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs, and from 2002 to 2003 he attended the one year course on composition and computer music at IRCAM with Philip Leroux. He has received several awards such as the 18th Japan Symphony Foundation Award (1996), the International Gaudeamus Music Week ’99 award, the 31st Bourges International Competition of Electro-acoustic Music and Sound Art award (2004), and the 24th Akutagawa Composition Prize. He was a finalist in the 64th Japan Music Competition (1995). His works have been commissioned by Music From Japan, Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo, Suntory Foundation for the Arts, and NHK Symphony Orchestra. Since 2005 he has been a lecturer at Toho Gakuen College Music Department and from 2012 an associate professor in the department of composition at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Fred Sherry, conductor

A pioneer and a visionary in the music world, cellist and conductor Fred Sherry has introduced audiences on five continents and all 50 United States to the music of our time through his close association with today’s composers. Carter, Davidovsky, Mackey, Rakowski, Satoh, Wuorinen and Zorn have written concertos for him, and he has premiered solo and chamber works dedicated to him by Babbitt, Bermel, Foss, Knussen, Lieberson and Takemitsu, among others. Sherry was a founding member of Tashi and Speculum Musicae; he has been a member of the Group for Contemporary Music, of Berio’s Juilliard Ensemble and of the Galimir String Quartet; and he was a close collaborator with jazz pianist and composer Chick Corea. He has been an active performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since the 1970s and was its Artistic Director from 1988 to 1992. Sherry has been a soloist and “sideman” on hundreds of commercial and esoteric recordings. The Fred Sherry String Quartet recordings of the Schoenberg String Quartet Concerto and the String Quartets Nos. 3 and 4 were both nominated for a Grammy. Sherry is a member of the cello faculty of the Juilliard School, the Mannes College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. His book, 25 Bach Duets from the Cantatas, was published by Boosey & Hawkes in 2011. In April 2018 C.F. Peters unveiled his treatise on contemporary string playing, A Grand Tour of Cello Technique.

http://fredsherry.com/

Elizabeth Brown, flute

Elizabeth Brown combines a composing career with a diverse performing life, playing flute, shakuhachi, and theremin in a wide variety of musical circles. Her music has been heard in Japan, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Australia, South Africa and Vietnam, as well as across the US and Europe, and includes many compositions for traditional Japanese instruments. Grand Prize Winner in the Makino Yutaka Composition Competition for Japanese traditional instrument orchestra, she was also a prizewinner in the Senzoku Gakuen Shakuhachi Composition Competition. Her music has been performed by Pro Musica Nipponia, Reigakusha, Music From Japan, Orchestra Asia, and Duo Yumeno, among others. Mirage, for shakuhachi and string quartet, has been performed in Tokyo, Prague, Sydney, and New York City.

Recent activities include Tokyo performances with Ralph Samuelson, shakuhachi and ichigenkin player Issui Minegishi; premiering Dialect, for solo shakuhachi at the World Shakuhachi Festival 2018 in London; playing theremin with the Boston Symphony; and playing flute with the New York City Ballet orchestra. She will perform A Bookmobile for Dreamers, her collaboration with artist Lothar Osterburg, at Portugal’s Vivarium Festival in March.

A Juilliard graduate and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, Brown has received grants, awards and commissions from Orpheus, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Newband, Asian Cultural Council, Japan/US Friendship Commission, Japan Foundation, Music From Japan, NewMusicUSA, and NYFA. She was a Fellow at Bellagio and at the MacDowell Colony, and Artist-in-Residence at the Hanoi National Conservatory and in Grand Canyon National Park. Her CD Elizabeth Brown: Mirage is available from New World Records. http://www.ElizabethBrownComposer.com

Oren Fader, guitar

Classical and electric guitarist Oren Fader (www.orenfader.com) has performed in Asia, Europe, and throughout the United States. Recent concerto performances include the Villa-Lobos Guitar Concerto with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with the New Jersey and the Omaha Symphonies.

Fader has performed hundreds of concerts with a wide range of classical and new music groups, including the Met Chamber Ensemble, New York Philharmonic, Talea Ensemble, ICE, Mark Morris Dance Group, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has premiered over 200 solo and chamber works with guitar, and can be heard on over 45 commercial recordings and films. Fader received his undergraduate degree from SUNY Purchase and his Master of Music degree from Florida State University. His major teachers include David Starobin and Bruce Holzman. Since 1994, he has been on the guitar and chamber music faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.

Marianne Gythfeldt, clarinet and bass clarinet

Marianne Gythfeldt has distinguished herself in chamber music and contemporary music performance on the international stage.

She is equally at-home in traditional, contemporary and alternative genres as clarinetist of Zephyros Winds, Consortium Ardesia, Collide-O-scope, SEM Ensemble, and former member of the Naumburg award-winning group New Millennium Ensemble. Gythfeldt is especially recognized in the fields of electro acoustic music, contemporary chamber music and performance education.

She was recently appointed Assistant Professor of clarinet and woodwind coordinator at Brooklyn College Conservatory where she will continue her work as a leader in arts engagement, outreach and development. Gythfeldt spent eight years as clarinet and chamber music professor at the University of Delaware where she won the Delaware Division of the Arts established artist award. She has recorded with CBS Masterworks, CRI, Albany, Koch and Mode Records.

Ryan Muncy, alto and baritone saxophones

Samuel Budish, percussion

Samuel Budish is a New York City-based percussionist who actively performs in a wide variety of musical traditions. He regularly performs with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He has also performed with Orpheus, the Sarasota Orchestra, and the New World Symphony. Budish was a member of the onstage band for the Broadway productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III and has also performed on the Late  Show with Stephen Colbert.  Dedicated to the music of today, Budish has premiered works by Hiroya Miura, Joseph Pereira, David Fulmer, and Tan Dun and is a founding member of Ensemble Échappé. He received his BM and MM from the Juilliard School.

Masayo Ishigure, koto

Masayo Ishigure began playing the koto and jiuta shamisen at the age of five in Gifu, Japan. After initial studies with Tadao and Kazue Sawai, she became a special research student in 1986 at the Sawai Koto Academy of Music. The unique pedagogical approach of the Sawai Koto Academy of Music draws from many traditions, from classical to jazz, and aims to change the perception of the koto from solely a traditional Japanese instrument to an instrument of universal expressiveness.

Later, Ishigure received a degree in Japanese Traditional Music from Takasaki Junior Arts College with a concentration on koto and shamisen. In 1992, she moved to the US. Her busy touring schedule has brought her to festivals in Japan, Thailand, Brazil, Holland, France, Germany, Mexico, Russia, Jamaica, Hawaii, South Korea, and Alaska. In 2015, Ishigure performed “Melody of Japan: Koto to Opera” at Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

In 2005, Masayo Ishigure was a recording artist alongside Yitzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and others on the Grammy Award-Winning soundtrack by John Williams from the movie Memoirs of a Geisha.

She has been the recipient of, or been nominated for many prestigious awards including: the 2016 Japanese Consul General’s Commendation, a nomination for “the 100 Japanese Respected by the World” in Newsweek (Japan) Magazine in 2007, and a nomination for the 2016 “Top 5 Female Cultural Japanese in New York” by Japanese Prime Minister Abe.

Ishigure has also taught koto and shamisen at Wesleyan University and Columbia University, and offers private lessons in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, DC.

http://www.masayoishigure.com

William Schimmel, accordion

William Schimmel is a virtuoso accordionist, author, philosopher and composer. He is one of the principle architects in the tango revival in America, the resurgence of the accordion and the philosophy of Musical Reality (composition with pre-existing music). Regarded as the world’s greatest accordionist by National Public Radio, he has performed with virtually every major symphony orchestra in America (and the Kirov) including a longstanding relationship with the Minnesota Orchestra, as well as virtually every chamber music group in New York including Ensemble Sospeso and the Odeon Jazz Ensemble. Pop star colleagues range from Sting to Tom Waits, who has made the legendary statement: “Bill Schimmel doesn’t play the accordion, he is the accordion”.

Schimmel now heads the Neupauer Conservatory Order of the Shield program, a private studies program for gifted students on a graduate and post graduate level.

Schimmel, and his wife, choreographer, director, filmmaker Micki Goodman co-founded and co-directs the Institute for Private Studies, a pluralistic think-tank. They have a 34 year old son, Michael, an accordionist and visual artist—and a Special Olympics gold medal winner.

Taka Kigawa, piano

The critically acclaimed pianist Taka Kigawa has earned outstanding international recognition as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber music artist, performing extensively in New York City, Boston, Cleveland, Washington, DC, Barcelona, Milan, Paris and Buenos Aires, in Ireland, as well as throughout his native Japan, including the cities of Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagano and Osaka. He has also been a featured artist on television and radio networks in the United States, Europe and Asia.

His 2010 New York City recital was chosen by The New York Times as one of the best concerts of the year, while a subsequent 2011 recital was selected as one of the most notable concerts of the 2011-2012 season by Musical America. His 2014 recital in Buenos Aires was named one of the best concerts of the year by Argentina’s leading newspaper, La Nación.

Possessing an extremely large and varied repertoire, ranging from the Baroque to the avant-garde, Taka Kigawa has collaborated closely with Pierre Boulez, Myung-Whun Chung and Jonathan Nott. He premiered the last solo piano work of jazz legend Yusef Lateef in New York City in 2013.

During both his undergraduate and graduate years, Kigawa also studied composition and conducting, receiving high honors in both disciplines. He furthered his studies in the United States at The Juilliard School in New York City, where he was awarded a Master of Music degree.

Kigawa is a Steinway Artist and resides in New York City.

www.takakigawa.com

Meaghan Burke, cello and voice

Hailed as “outstanding,” with a “street-smart, feline voice” (The New York Times), Meaghan Burke is a cellist, vocalist, and composer working in the space between contemporary music, improvised music, and songwriting. She is a founding member of the contemporary feminist string quartet The Rhythm Method, avant-grunge band Forever House, bi-hemispherical performance trio Dead Language, and Viennese songwriter collective Loose Lips Sink Ships. Burke recently released her second album of her original songs, Creature Comforts, as well as Forever House’s debut album Eaves and Loose Lips Sink Ships’ self-titled debut.

Momenta Quartet

Emilie-Anne Gendron – violin
Alex Shiozaki – violin
Stephanie Griffin – viola
Michael Haas – cello

Momenta: the plural of momentum – four individuals in motion towards a common goal. This is the idea behind the Momenta Quartet, whose eclectic vision encompasses contemporary music of all aesthetic backgrounds alongside great music from the recent and distant past.  The New York City-based quartet has premiered over 100 works, collaborated with over 120 living composers and was praised by The New York Times for its “diligence, curiosity and excellence.” In the words of The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, “few American players assume Haydn’s idiom with such ease.”

The quartet came into being in November 2004, when composer Matthew Greenbaum invited violist Stephanie Griffin to perform Mario Davidovsky’s String Trio for events celebrating Judaism and Culture at New York’s Symphony Space and Temple University in Philadelphia. A residency through the composition department at Temple University ensued, and the rehearsals and performances were so satisfying that the players decided to form a quartet. Through this residency, Momenta gave two annual concerts highlighting the talents of Temple University student composers alongside 20th-century masterworks and works from the classical canon, and repeated the programs at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture. From the outset, Momenta treated all music equally, devoting as much time, care and commitment to the student works as to the imposing musical monuments.

Word of Momenta’s passionate advocacy for emerging composers spread quickly. Composers started inviting Momenta for similar concerts and residencies at other academic institutions, among them Cornell, Columbia and Yeshiva Universities; the Boston and Cincinnati Conservatories; and the Eastman School of Music. In 2008 the quartet won its first major commission grant from the Koussevitzky Foundation for Malaysian composer Kee Yong Chong, and since received a second Koussevitzky grant for Bolivian composer Agustín Fernández. Deeply committed to the musical avant-garde of the developing world, Momenta has been an indispensable advocate for many international composers.  In addition to world premieres by Chong and Fernández, Momenta has premiered and championed the works of Tony Prabowo (Indonesia), Cergio Prudencio (Bolivia) and Hana Ajiashvili (Georgia). Upcoming adventures include a project to perform and record all thirteen string quartets by Mexican microtonal maverick Julián Carrillo (1875-1965) over the next three years.

Momenta has appeared at such prestigious venues as the Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery, Rubin Museum, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study and looks forward to high-profile concerts at Chamber Music Cincinnati, Washington University and at the internationally renowned Cervantino Festival in Mexico. Momenta gave its Mexican debut at the National University (UNAM) last June and has performed in the United Kingdom, Indonesia and Singapore. Momenta has recorded for Centaur Records, Furious Artisans, PARMA,  and New World Records; and has been broadcast on WQXR, Q2 Music, Austria’s Oe1, and Vermont Public Radio. The quartet’s debut album, Similar Motion, is available on Albany Records.

Emilie-Anne Gendron, violin

Alex Shiozaki, violin

Stephanie Griffin, viola

Michael Haas, cello