HOLIDAY TRIPTYCH

PROGRAM NOTES

Forget Me Not by Takuma Itoh
a Kyo-Shin-An Arts commission

The combination of a piano trio and a trio of traditional Japanese instruments (sankyoku) is a sound world that - to my knowledge - didn't exist. While there were plenty of struggles to compose this work for this unprecedented instrumentation, I experienced an occasional sensation of relief when it felt like I was simply transcribing an existing work for this instrumentation. For a  few brief moments during the compositional process, it felt as if there were a faint memory that would come into focus for me to write down before it would fade again. It was as if the musical idea were saying "Forget me not" as it vanished into thin air, like the knight in the story about the Forget-Me-Not flower*. There is a part of me that distrusts such ideas, but I was comforted by the fact that I could not be plagiarizing just because this instrumentation is so unique, so I decided to use them.  *There's a legend about the etymology of a Forget-Me-Not flower: a knight is plucking the flower for his lover when he gets swallowed into a river. Before he drowns, he yells "Forget me not!" and throws the flower onto shore. The lover decides to memorialize him by naming the flower after his final words.  – Takuma Itoh

Four Ethereal Pieces by Aleksandra Vrebalov
a Kyo-Shin-An Arts commission

Four Ethereal Pieces, a sextet for classical string quartet, shakuhachi and koto, continues my ongoing exploration of harmonic language and new sounds; this time with a somewhat uncommon combination of instruments. For me, sounds are identity and memory markers, aural signatures of a place, and they give the listener a strong sense of belonging (or not) to a place. I believe that if we truly hear and see what surrounds us, then that experience anchors us in time and space, making us present and aware of our place in the moment, facilitating the connection that each individual makes to their inner space of memories, emotions, and values. 

During the 1990s, when war was raging in former Yugoslavia where I resided at the time.  I used to have a cassette tape with traditional koto tunes that I would play over and over again. Its contemplative, reserved, dignified sound and the music’s minimal, yet expressive gestures offered a refuge, an aural landscape that felt orderly, mindful, and safe.  It provided the qualities that I craved for in my volatile physical environment.  In Four Ethereal Pieces I search for that feeling of stretched time, beauty, balance and harmony, once so instrumental for my mental and emotional survival.  – Aleksandra Vrebalov

Skydive by James Nyoraku Schlefer

As a lifelong thrill seeker, I have always wondered about skydiving. The feeling of falling through the sky; soaring through the air. Skydive takes us on that journey. The music opens with a naïve sense of wonder as the instruments soar up and down the scales in various combinations. This gives way to a very slow blues with as much silence as sound, a kind of nightmare as a dream of the dive unfolds in the subconscious. As reality sinks in, a pounding heartbeat in a meter of three gives both cello and piano solo opportunities leading to a syncopated groove with solos for shakuhachi and cello. Each instrument then takes an anxious turn at soaring up and down again before all build up to a frenzied climax as in “what happens if I crash?” The desolate feeling of that possibility slowly recedes during an extended piano solo. The other instruments join and return to the opening melody where the mode changes and is now based on the pentatonic Okinawan scale and the piece concludes in a joyful and successful experience. – James Nyoraku Schlefer

PERFORMER BIOGRAPHIES

After more than three decades of working together, the ARIANNA STRING QUARTET has firmly established itself as one of America's finest chamber ensembles. Their performances have been praised for “tonal warmth, fastidious balance and expressive vitality” (Chicago Tribune) and “emotional commitment and fluent virtuosity,” (Pretoria News, South Africa. Formed in 1992, the ASQ garnered national attention by winning the Grand Prize in the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, First Prize in both the Coleman and Carmel Chamber Music Competitions, and were Laureates in the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition. The ASQ has appeared throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and in South Africa. They have collaborated with members of the Vermeer, Tokyo, Cleveland and Juilliard Quartets, and their live performances have been heard on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today,” and “Live from Music Mountain”, which broadcasts to 125 stations in the U.S. and to 35 countries. The ASQ has recorded for Albany Records and Urtext Digital Classics, and extensively with Centaur Records.  In addition to their critically acclaimed recording of the two string quartets of Janácek, the ASQ has also recently completed their recordings of the Complete String Quartets of Beethoven. Since 2000, the members of the Arianna String Quartet have been the full-time string faculty at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where they teach applied violin, viola, and cello, and coach student chamber music ensembles. ariannaquartet.com

Since forming in 2010, NEAVE TRIO - violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov, and pianist Eri Nakamura - has earned enormous praise for its engaging, cutting-edge performances. Neave has performed at many esteemed concert series and at festivals worldwide, including Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 92nd Street Y, Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Norfolk and Norwich Chamber Music Series (United Kingdom), and the Samoylov and Rimsky Korsakow Museums' Chamber Music Series in St. Petersburg (Russia). The Trio has held residency positions at Brown University, University of Virginia, San Diego State University as the first ever Fisch/Axelrod Trio-in-Residence, and the Banff Centre (Canada), among many other institutions. Neave Trio was also in residence at the MIT School of Architecture and Design in collaboration with dancer/choreographer Richard Colton. In the fall of 2017, the Trio joined the faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College as Alumni Artists, Faculty Ensemble‑in‑Residence. neavetrio.com

JUSTIN JAY HINES is a percussionist, composer, and educator who has performed with the New York Philharmonic, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Moab Music Festival, Alarm Will Sound, and the Chamber Music Society of Detroit. He has served as a NY Philharmonic Teaching Artist in New York City and Japan since 1997, and in May 2018, he made his NY Philharmonic debut hosting the Young People’s Concert Inspirations and Tributes: “The Riddle of Shostakovich,” and has gone on to become an annual host of the series. Hines has also collaborated with the Juilliard School, the St. Louis Symphony, New World Symphony, 92nd Street Y, Lincoln Center Education, Carnegie Hall, and the Caramoor Center for the Arts. His classical compositions have been performed by his group Classical Jam at venues throughout the US and Asia. Currently and he is a senior composition mentor for the NY Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program, and the artistic director of Living Arts Collaborative. justinhinesmusic.com

SUMIE KANEKO, koto and shamisen, began studying the koto when she was five, and the following year performed her first broadcast for NHK. In 1995, Sumie won the Takasaki International Competition for koto performance. She studied Japanese traditional music for koto and shamisen at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music then studied Jazz vocal at Berklee College of Music in 2006. Performance highlights include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, TED talk, Getty Center, Boston Ballet, Silk Road Project, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She has also given workshops at Harvard and Princeton Universities, Wellesley College, Berklee College of Music and others. In 2014, her jazz fusion project, J-Trad and More, was invited to the Washington, DC Jazz Festival, co-sponsored by the Embassy of Japan. Sumie was the shamisen player for Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning work "The Long Christmas Ride Home", and she has collaborated with many world instrumentalists including Kenny Endo, Kaoru Watanabe, On Ensemble and Yumiko Tanaka, as well as painters, dancers and calligraphers. She has toured in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Jamaica (by Japan Foundation NY), Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and throughout the United States. sumiekanekomusic.com

YOKO REIKANO KIMURA, koto, is an enthusiastic supporter of contemporary music, a frequent collaborator with Western musicians and a performer of classical Japanese music in the Yamada school style. A resident of the US since 2010, Yoko is a founder of Duo YUMENO, with cellist Hikaru Tamaki, working to commission new music and expand the repertoire for these instruments. The Duo received a Chamber Music America Commissioning Award in 2014 and the Kyoto Aoyama Barock Saal Award in 2015. As a soloist, Yoko performed Kin'ichi Nakanoshima’s Shamisen Concerto at the National Olympic Memorial Center in 2004 and Daron Hagen’s Koto Concerto: Genji with the Euclid Quartet, Ciompi Quartet, Freimann Quartet and the Prairie Ensemble Orchestra in 2013. In 2014, she premiered Kaito Nakahori’s Japanese Footbridge for koto and chamber ensemble at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, and in 2015, James Nyoraku Schlefer’s Concertante at the Round Top Music Festival. Yoko performs frequently with Kyo-Shin-An Arts and has worked with Heiner Goebbels, the Wien Solisten Trio, and Kenny Endo, among others. University performances have included Harvard, Texas A&M, New England Conservatory, and City University of New York. In addition, Yoko has toured in Poland, Switzerland, France, Lithuania, Korea, China, Israel, Qatar, Italy, Turkey and multiple countries in South America. yokoreikanokimura.com         

JAMES NYORAKU SCHLEFER, shakuhachi, is a Grand Master of the shakuhachi and one of only a handful of non-Japanese artists to have achieved this rank. He received the Dai-Shi-Han (Grand Master) certificate in 2001, and his second Shi-Han certificate in 2008, from the Mujuan Dojo in Kyoto. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Tanglewood and BAM, as well as multiple venues across the country and in Japan, Indonesia, Brazil and Europe. Schlefer first encountered the shakuhachi in 1979, while working towards a career as a flute player and pursuing an advanced degree in musicology. Today he is considered by his colleagues to be one of most influential Western practitioners of this distinctive art form. Known to his students as Nyoraku sensei, Schlefer established his own dojo in NYC in 1996. He also teaches shakuhachi at Columbia University, a broad spectrum of Western and World music courses at New York City College of Technology (CUNY), and performs and lectures at colleges and universities throughout the United States. As a composer, Schlefer has written multiple chamber and orchestral works combining Japanese and Western instruments as well as numerous pieces solely for traditional Japanese instruments. In December 2015, he was recognized by Musical America Worldwide as one of their “30 Top Professionals and Key Influencers” for his work both as a composer and Artistic Director of Kyo-Shin-An Arts. His writings about the shakuhachi and his career were published in 2018 on NewMusicBox and he was profiled by the National Endowment for the Arts’ “Arts Works Blog” in May 2016. His programming for Kyo-Shin-An Arts has also been recognized with two CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming (2013 and 2016). His orchestral music can be heard on the recording Spring Sounds Spring Season MSR Classics. nyoraku.com

KATHLEEN SUPOVÉ, piano, is one of America’s most acclaimed and versatile contemporary music pianists, known for continually redefining what it means to be a pianist/keyboardist/performance artist in today’s world. In addition to her compelling virtuosity, she is also known for her inventive ways of breaking down the wall between performer and audience. After winning top prizes in the Gaudeamus International Competition for Interpretation of Contemporary Music, she began her career as a guest artist at the prestigious Darmstadt Festival in Germany. Since then, Ms. Supové has presented solo concerts entitled The Exploding Piano, in which she has championed the music of countless contemporary composers. Among these are: Frederic Rzewski, Louis Andriessen, Terry Riley (including the all-star historic performance of “In C” in Carnegie Hall, curated by the Kronos Quartet, with the composer performing), Earle Brown, Chinary Ung, Giacinto Scelsi, Iannis Xenakis, John Adams, Morton Subotnick, Joan La Barbara, Jacob TV (Ter Veldhuis), Alvin Curran, Randall Woolf, Neil Rolnick, David Lang, Nick Didkovsky, Eve Beglarian, Missy Mazzoli, Mohammed Fairouz, Anna Clyne, Daniel Bernard Roumain, Gene Pritsker, Miya Masaoka, Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Alex Weiser, Dylan Mattingly, Corey Dargel, John Zorn, Carolyn Yarnell, Gene Pritsker, Paula Matthusen, Annie Gosfield, Daniel Felsenfeld, Jacob Cooper, Matt Marks, Marita Bolles, Phil Kline, Lukas Ligeti, Marti Epstein, Arlene Sierra, Patrick Grant, Michael Gatonska, Dan Becker, Elaine Kaplinsky, Dafna Naphtali, Jed Distler, Belinda Reynolds, Isaac Schankler, Gameboy composer Bubblyfish, and many others. supove.com

HIKARU TAMAKI, cello, concertizes regularly as a soloist and a chamber musician. He served as the principal cellist of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and was a member of the Freimann String Quartet. Before joining the Philharmonic, he was an associate principal cellist of the Chicago Civic Orchestra and performed under the baton of Daniel Barenboim at Carnegie Hall. Solo performances with the Philharmonic have included the Dvorak Cello Concerto, Don Quixote among other major concertos. He was awarded a bachelor of arts degree from Rice University and a master of music degree from Northwestern University, where his teachers were Paul Katz and Hans Jorgen Jensen. Hikaru was a prizewinner in the prestigious All Japan Viva Hall Cello Competition. He performs regularly with Yoko Reikano Kimura (koto/shamisen) under the moniker Duo YUMENO, and they were awarded the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program grant in 2014, and received the Aoyama Baroque Saal Award in the following year. hikarucello.com

COMPOSER BIOGRAPHIES

TAKUMA ITOH spent his early childhood in Japan before moving to Northern California.  His music has been described as "brashly youthful and fresh" (New York Times). Featured amongst one of "100 Composers Under 40" on NPR Music and WQXR, his numerous awards and commissions include the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Music Alive: New Partnerships grant with the Tucson Symphony, the Barlow Endowment, the Chamber Music America Classical Commission, the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize, six ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Leo Kaplan Award, the American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, the Symphony in C Young Composer Competition, the New York Youth Symphony First Music, The New York Virtuoso Singers, Maui Arts & Cultural Center, and the Renée B Fisher Foundation. Itoh's music has been performed by the Albany Symphony, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Ensemble Échappé, Ossia New Music, the New York Youth Symphony, Symphony in C, the Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra (Poland), the Shanghai, St. Lawrence Quartet, Cassatt, Momenta and Invoke String Quartets, Sara Davis Buechner, Kyo-Shin-An Arts, Music from Copland House, Kojiro Umezaki, Hub New Music, Duo Yumeno, Pro Musica Nipponia, and many others. His works can be heard on Albany and Blue Griffin Records, and are published by Theodore Presser, Resolute Music, and Murphy Music Press. Itoh has been an Associate Professor of Music. at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa since 2012.

ALEKSANDRA VREBALOV has written more than 90 works ranging from concert music, to opera, dance and experimental and documentary film. Her work is characterized by the fusion of influences from different musical traditions of the countries in which she lived or travelled, from Serbia, to the United States, as well as the Middle East. She has written music for Western instruments, as well as ethnic and historical instruments from the Balkans, Asia, and Poland.

Her works have been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, English National Ballet, Serbian National Theater, Belgrade Philharmonic, The Forbidden City Orchestra in Beijing, Jose Limon and Rambert Dance Companies. Vrebalov has extensively collaborated with Kronos Quartet and has written 18 works for the group.  A fellow of MacDowell Colony, Rockefeller Bellagio Center, Djerassi, American Opera Projects, The Hermitage, and Tanglewood, Vrebalov is the recipient of The Harvard Fromm Commission, The American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Fellowship, Barlow Endowment Commission, and MAP Fund grant. Vrebalov has made music with young refugees from Syria and Iraq at the Flying Carpet Festival on Turkish/Syrian border in 2018 and 2019. 

There are more than twenty CD releases containing Vrebalov’s work, recorded for Nonesuch, Cantaloupe,  Innova, Orange Music Mountain, New Amsterdam, Centaur Records, and Vienna Modern Masters. Vrebalov is a full time professor of composition at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. aleksandravrebalov.com