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.

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 is scheduled to be released by the Naxos label.

Kimura and Tamaki first collaborated in 2008 and since then, have been performing regularly in the US and Japan. They have been actively presenting their cross-cultural programs throughout the US and have performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, the John F Kennedy Center, the United Nations, New England Conservatory, Japan Society, Japanese Ambassador’s Residence in New York as well as Washington DC, Renaissance Society of Chicago, Clark Art Institute and Rubin Museum of Art. In 2016, they were invited by Chamber Music America to give a feature performance at its national conference concert. In 2017, the duo was featured at the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC. The duo also performed its 10th anniversary recital to a sold-out audience at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in 2019. In order to promote intercultural music to the younger generation, the duo was invited to present residency programs at Princeton University, University of Chicago, University of Hawaii, the Hartt School and Longy School of music, giving recitals and unique opportunities for young composers to create new works for koto, shamisen and cello.

Since 2010, they have held a successful annual tour to Japan that has extended to such cities as Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Nara. Some of the notable venues are the Tokyo National Museum, the Myōnichi-kan Auditorium (Tokyo), the Aoyama Music Memorial Hall (Kyoto) as well as Kasuga Grand Shrine, Ryōan-ji and Yakushi-ji Temples and other UNESCO World Heritage sites. As a cultural ambassador of Japanese music, the duo was invited to Turkey in 2013, performing at the former Consulate General of Japan in Istanbul and at Namik Kemal University in Tekirdag. In 2014, they visited Trinidad and were featured at the opening concert of “Japan – CARICOM (14 Caribbean countries) Friendship Year 2014” – an event promoted by the Japan Foundation, NY and co-organized by the Embassy of Japan in Trinidad and Tobago. In 2015, the duo was invited to perform at Clare Hall, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. In 2018, they performed at Los Andes University in Bogota, Colombia in an event to celebrate the 110th anniversary of Japan-Colombia diplomatic relations. Recently, the duo performed for the ceremony of the new appointment of the Honorary Consulate General of Japan in Puerto Rico. Learn more about Duo YUMENO here.

TERMS OF THE CONSORTIUM

There is no commission or buy-in fee to join the consortium. A one-time parts rental fee of $1500 (payable to Peermusic Classical; you can reach them here) entitles the orchestra to a complete PDF performance set and to perform the work at any time between summer 2024 and summer 2026.

• Duration: 25 minutes

• Exclusivity: one season

• Availability: June 2024 (Peermusic Classical is publisher)

• Duo YUMENO’s fee is negotiated separately with the orchestra.

Three instrumentations will be made available:

• Large: 2 flutes, piccolo-2 oboes, Cor Anglais in F-2 clarinets in Bb, Bass Clarinet in Bb-3 bassoons; 4 horns in F-3 trumpets in C (1 alt. Piccolo in D), 3 trombones, tuba-timp.-perc(1)-hp-cel-strings (8-8-6-6-4 in players minimum)

• Medium: 1.picc-1.CA-2-2-4331-timp-perc(2)-hp-pft/cel-strings

• Small: 2.2.2.2-2.2.2.1-timp-perc(1)-strings (5-3-3-3-2 in players)

Questions? Write to Daron here.

CONSORTIUM MEMBERS

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