Contemporary Piano with Aki Takahashi November 12, 2006

Aki Takahashi is a recognized piano virtuoso and ardent supporter of contemporary music who, through her unwavering enthusiasm, has won the acclaim of audiences and composers alike.

The evening’s program will include works by Morton Feldman, Peter Garland, Marc Sabat and Somei Satoh—plus selections from the celebrated Hyper Beatles series arranged by Akira Nishimura, Pauline Oliveros, Carl Stone and James Tenney.
Program (in program order)
Somei Satoh: HASHI (Bridges) Ⅳ (2006), world premiere
Peter Garland: Waves Breaking on Rocks (Elegy for All of Us) (2003), U.S. premiere
Marc Sabat: Nocturne (1996)
Morton Feldman: Extensions 3 (1952)

Selections from the Hyper Beatles collection (1989-91)
Pauline Oliveros: “Norwegian Wood”
Akira Nishimura: “Because”
Carl Stone: “She Said She Said”
James Tenney: “Do You Want to Know a Secret”
James Tenney: “Love Me Do”

Aki Takahashi made her public debut shortly after graduating from the Tokyo University of Arts with a masters degree in 1970. While acknowledged for her classical musicianship, her enthusiasm and acclaim as a new music interpreter have attracted the attention of many composers. Cage, Feldman, Takemitsu, Yun, Oliveros, Ruders, Satoh, Lucier, and Garland, to name a few, have all created works for her. Ms. Takahashi received the first Kenzo Nakajima prize in 1982, and was recipient of the first Kyoto Music Award (1986). She directed the “New Ears” concert series in Yokohama (1983–97), was artist-in-residence at SUNY Buffalo (1980–81) and guest professor at the California Institute of the Arts (1984). Her landmark recording of 20 contemporary piano works, “Aki Takahashi Piano Space”, received the Merit Prize at the Japan Art Festival (1973). Her series of Erik Satie concerts (1975–77) heralded a Satie boom in Japan, resulting in her editing all of his piano works for Zen-On and recording them on Toshiba-EMI. She created the Hyper-Beatles project with Toshiba, which invited 47 international composers to arrange/recompose their favorite Beatles tunes. Future projects with Ms. Takahashi on Mode will include solo and ensemble works of Berio, Bowles, Cage, Feldman, Hauer, Mikhashoff, Scelsi and Xenakis, with other projects planned.

HASHI (Bridges) Ⅳ (2006) Somei Satoh, world premiere
I have written four piano pieces of the title named HASHI (Bridges). In Japanese legend, it is said there is a deep river between this world and the other world. It is believed that there is a bridge across the river, which was built by innumerable magpies. The bridge is used to pass the dead. The bridge of magpies that floats on the darkness is something that symbolizes the meaning of my life. The title called HASHI originates in this legend. This piece is dedicated to Aki Takahashi.
Somei Satoh was born in Japan in 1947 and currently lives in Tokyo. Largely self-taught as a composer he came to musical creation through the spiritual exercises of both Shintoism and Zen Buddhism. In early 1970s, after his attending the Nihon University of Art, Satoh joined the Tone Field performance group, an experimental inter-arts ensemble which performed his earliest composition. These early compositions include those for solo piano or for piano with electronics in which he explored gradations of sound by employing tremolos of single tones or clusters using the instrument's various registers of dynamics. In some ways, Satoh’s techniques and career path paralleled those of the American minimalists. His music, like theirs, has developed in complexity and sophistication over the years. Over the course of the 1970s, his instrumental palette diversified and his music took on a greater melodiousness. By the 1980s, his music became more sensual after the model of the Romantic tradition. A visiting artist grant from the Asian Cultural Council enabled him to spend a year in the United States in 1983. Eventually, he received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can, and the New York Philharmonic, among others. Currently, Satoh tends to focus his work on large orchestral forces. His compositions have been recorded for New Albion, Lovely Music, Mode, and Alm.

Waves Breaking on Rocks (Elegy for All of Us) (2003) Peter Garland, U.S. premiere
Waves Breaking on Rocks (Elegy for All of Us) was written in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2003. It was commissioned and premiered by Aki Takahashi, to whom it is also dedicated. The work was inspired (sic) by the deaths of four of my close friends during the years 2000–03, and individual movements are dedicated to each of them: 1. The White Place, for photographer Walter Chappell; movement 2. Elegy for All of Us, for the poet Laurence Weisberg; 4. A House in Island Bay, for New Zealand playwright and poet Alan Brunton; 5. Sierra Madre, for composer Lou Harrison. The other two movements are: 3. Summer, Again; and 6. Waves Breaking on Rocks. It is hard not to see one’s dear friends for years, and then to be far away when they die, knowing thus that one will never see them again. This was one motive, along with other reasons, for my return to the US in 2005. This is the third major solo piano work commissioned and premiered by Aki Takahashi; each, curiously, seven years apart: Walk in Beauty (1989), Bright Angel-Hermetic Bird (1996) and this one. So, with the hope that we both will still be alive, I have promised Aki a new solo piece for 2010. It’s all about beauty: nothing else. —Peter Garland
Peter Garland was born in 1952 and studied with Harold Budd and James Tenney during the first years of CalArts. From 1971 to 1991 he edited and published the new music journal and small press, SOUNDINGS; he played a major role in the rediscovery of composers such as Lou Harrison, Conlon Nancarrow, Dane Rudhyar and Paul Bowles. During the 1980s he lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he directed his own performance ensemble. From 1991 to 1995 he lived and traveled continuously around the world, visiting twelve countries on five continents. From 1997 to 2005 he lived in Mexico, where he did extensive fieldwork and investigations of Mexican traditional musics. In addition to his own music, he has written nine books, only two of which have been published. Along with studies of Javanese music and puppetry and Australian aboriginal music, he has been a lifelong investigator of native American musics, in California, the U.S. Southwest and Mexico. He has collaborated with percussionist William Winant and the ensemble Essential Music, and has worked closely with Aki Takahashi since the 1980s. Ms. Takahashi has recorded three CDs of Peter Garland’s music, on the New Albion, Tzadik and Mode labels. He currently lives in Maine.

Nocturne (1996) Marc Sabat
Nocturne was composed as a study of metric modulations in slow tempo. Each new pattern is introduced as a polyrhythm in relation to the currently sounding cycle. In time, its own tempo is allowed to dominate and redefine the perceived pulse. The mathematical relationships of tempi are perceived as simple intervallic expansions and contractions of the flowing passage of time. The piece is dedicated to Linda Catlin Smith.
Marc Sabat is a Canadian composer, violinist and researcher living in Berlin since 1999. He has written concert music for various ensembles including acoustic instruments, live computer and electronics, as well as making recorded projects involving sound and video (installations, internet pieces, CDs and DVDs). His work is available through Plainsound Music Edition. He has co-developed The Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation, and teaches courses in acoustics and experimental intonation at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Sabat also performs chamber music and solo concerts, and has recorded music on various labels including Mode, World Edition and Hat[now]Art. Marc Sabat studied at the University of Toronto and the Juilliard School of Music in New York. He is currently a visiting composer at the California Institute of the Arts.

REDCAT (the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), CalArts’ downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts, is located at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Aki Takahashi is slated to perform on Sunday, November 11, 2006 at 7p.m. Ticket prices range from $20-$16, with discounts available. Seating is general admission. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office—located at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, by calling 213.237.2800, or at http://www.redcat.org. Please plan on arriving at least 30 minutes before curtain time. Seating at REDCAT is unreserved, and late seating is not guaranteed. Parking is available in the Walt Disney Concert Hall parking garage. Enter from 2nd St. and proceed to level P3 for direct access to REDCAT. The evening event rate is $8 after 5 p.m. Before 5 p.m., the maximum daytime rate is $17.

Official Website: http://redcat.org/season/0607/mus/aki.php