On June 9, National Sawdust, 80 N. Sixth Street, Brooklyn, will present "Kaze (The Wind) / Harmonic Constellations," an evening of two premieres starring Mari Kimura, the renowned violinist/composer who is best known for her use of subharmonics and interactive motion sensor technologies. The evening will offer debut performances of "Kaze (The Wind)," an audio/visual chamber piece composed by Kimura, and "Harmonic Constellations," an entrancing work of microtonal harmonies composed for her by Michael Harrison. It will also unveil µgic, a new digital music controller, and launch two CDs.
"Kaze (The Wind)" will be performed by Kimura, vocalist Jin-Xiang Yu and the Cassatt String Quartet. In this romantic, other-worldly piece, computer graphics interact with melodies made by five musicians and a vocalist as well as motion sensors that some of the performers are wearing. It will demonstrate µgic, a new wearable wireless digital music controller that has been developed by Kimura and Liubo Borissov.
"Harmonic Constellations," a challenging massive opus composed by
Michael Harrison, will be performed by Kimura. The piece is a strange, magical work of sonic holograms, built on nine "constellations" of Just Intonation harmonies, scored for multi-tracked violin lines and computer generated sine tones. It is the successor to Harrison's noted work for the cello, "Just Ancient Loops."
These two compositions are featured on CDs containing performances by Kimura that will be launching in the evening. "Harmonic Constellations" (New World Records) is named for that work by Harrison, which it contains along with other works for violin and electronics written by Eric Chasalow, Michael Gatonska, Mari Kimura, Hannah Lash and Eric Moe. "Voyage Apollonian" (Innova) contains "Kaze (The Wind)," several other compositions by Kimura, and transcriptions to the violin of works by three Brazilian composers.
"Kaze (The Wind)," composed by Mari Kimura is a work for an audio/visual chamber ensemble using violin, voice, string quartet and interactive computer. The word Kaze, which means "the wind" in Japanese, has many meanings. These include forces of nature, styles of art, and forces in politics and the world that are hard to grasp but must be survived and coexisted with. With this piece, Kimura and media artist Liubo Borissov are introducing their new wearable music controller, named µgic (pronounced "myu-zhik"). It is a glove with circuitry that enables the wearer to create seamless motion-driven interfaces for real-time multimedia performances. The work is performed by Mari Kimura, vocalist Jin-Xiang Yu, and the Cassatt String Quartet. Kimura and Yu will each be using µgic in the piece in order to interact with audio and graphics in real time. The devices, worn in gloves, will respond to Mari Kimura's bowing hand and Jin-Xiang Yu's gestures, both to make musical tones and to interact with the piece's computer graphic display by Liubo Borissov and young computer graphic artist Yujin Ariza. "Kaze (The Wind)" was commissioned by Harvestworks Media Arts Center, with the generous grant from New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). This composition is published as a solo performance by Kimura on her new CD, "Voyage Apollonian" (Innova).
Mari Kimura will also perform "Harmonic Constellations" by
Michael Harrison, his latest massive opus, scored for violin with 13 pre-recorded tracks and computer generated sine tones. In order to perform it, the violinist must perform exact pitches notated in Hz (frequency) on the score, with little pitch deviation as possible. The piece was commissioned and composed for Ms. Kimura. It is comprised of nine constellations of just intonation harmonies based on whole number proportions. Harrison calls the concept "Integrated Proportionality." Its effect is to create invisible sonic holograms in which the listener hears slightly different tones by simple shifts of the head. Unless headphones are used, the work is never beheld the same way twice. Rhythmic pulsations and tremolos in the work are the product of interference patterns (acoustical beats) between close auditory frequencies. That is why playing the piece is a supreme test of the violinist's technique. Kimura must perform exact pitches notated in Hz (frequency) on the score, with as little pitch deviation as humanly possible, in order to reveal the entire universe of microtonal intervals that creates beats and harmonies in the score. This project was supported by fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. The programming behind this composition is explained in composer's notes at:
www.jsnyc.com/season/HC_Harrison.htm. The composition is published in "Harmonic Constellations," a new CD release by New World Records.
"Harmonic Constellations" is successor to Harrison's "Just Ancient Loops" (2007-11), composed for Maya Beiser, which was described as an "Orchestra of Cellos." That piece was a sequel to a 75-minute work for re-tuned piano, "Revelation: Music in Pure Intonation," a large, complex work that explored the range and sonic possibilities of a single instrument played in pure intonation.
The motion sensor introduced in this performance is called µgic (pronounced "mu-zhik"), developed by Mari Kimura and Liubo Borissov. µgic is a wearable music controller that enables the creation of seamless motion-driven interfaces for real-time multimedia performance. It contains a gyroscope, an accelerometers and a magnetometer. In "Kaze (The Wind), " this fully wireless Wifi device is housed inside gloves that are worn by the performers. µgic will be commercially available at affordable price for musicians in the very near future. The µgic project has been partially funded by
itac.org (Industry+Technology Assistance Corp) that is supported by NYSCA, Governor Cuomo and the NY State Legislature, The Rockefeller Foundation's NYC Cultural Innovation Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts. The device is a successor, of sorts, to the glove-enclosed bowing motion sensor developed at IRCAM in France which Kimura used in concerts between 2009 and now.
Mari Kimura (
www.marikimura.com) is at the forefront of violinists who are extending the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. She is widely admired as the inventor of "Subharmonics," a technique by which she plays notes below the open-G string without lowering the tuning. She has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras including Tokyo Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic and Hamburg Symphony. Her US premiers include works by Luciano Berio and Salvatore Sciarrino. As a composer, Ms. Kimura is well known for her works for interactive computer and collaborations with IRCAM in Paris. Her awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, Fromm Commission and a residency at IRCAM in 2010; her grants include New Music USA, NYFA, Arts International, Vilcek Foundation, Japan Foundation, Argosy Foundation and NYSCA. In 2011, in recognition of her ground-breaking work as a foreign-born artist, she was named one of "Immigrants: Pride of America" by the Carnegie Corporation. Her CD, "The World Below G and Beyond," features her Subharmonics and interactive compositions using IRCAM's bowing motion sensor.
In 2013, Ms. Kimura inaugurated a new summer program as the Director of "Future Music Lab" at the Atlantic Music Festival in collaboration with IRCAM. In 2014, she won the Composers Now residency at the Pocantico Center at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. She has also won a grant from Harvestworks Media Arts Center through
itac.org (Industry+Technology Assistance Corp) that is supported by NYSCA, Governor Cuomo and the NY State Legislature, The Rockefeller Foundation's NYC Cultural Innovation Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 1998, she has taught a graduate course in Interactive Computer Music Performance at Juilliard.
Michael Harrison (
www.michaelharrison.com) has been called "an American Maverick" by
Philip Glass. His compositions have been performed at
Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, BAM Next Wave Festival, MoMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou, MASS MoCA, Stuttgart Ballet, United Nations, Bang on a Can marathons, Spoleto, Ojai, Klavier Festival Ruhr, Havana Contemporary Music Festival, and Sundance. Through his expertise in "just intonation" tunings and Indian ragas, Harrison has created "a new harmonic world...of vibrant sound" (The New York Times). He has collaborated or performed with Roomful of Teeth, cellist Maya Beiser, filmmaker
Bill Morrison, Kronos Quartet, JACK Quartet, Young People's Chorus of NYC, Contemporaneous, and his mentors La Monte Young and Terry Riley. "Revelation" (2007) and "Time Loops" (2012), his CDs on Bang on a Can's Cantaloupe Music label, were chosen by The New York Times, Boston Globe, Time Out New York, and NPR among the Best Classical Recordings of the Year.
The Cassatt String Quartet (
www.cassattquartet.com) has performed at New York's Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall at
Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood Music Theater, The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Theatre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and the Beijing Central Conservatory in China. It was the first quartet chosen for Juilliard's Young Artists Quartet Program. At the Library of Congress, Cassatt has performed on the library's matched quartet of Stradivarius instruments. Other noted performances include the three complete Beethoven Quartet cycles at the University at Buffalo. The quartet has been heard on NPR's Performance Today, Boston's WGBH, and New York's WQXR and WNYC. They have 30 recordings, and were named three times to
Alex Ross' 10 best classical recordings of the year in The New Yorker magazine. The Quartet was named for celebrated American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. It is comprised of Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower on violin,
Sarah Adams on viola and
Elizabeth Anderson on cello.
Jin-Xiang "JX" Yu is a Chinese/Russian soprano raised in n a musical family in Japan, where she played piano and jazz trumpet. She grew up speaking Japanese, English and Mandarin Chinese while learning Spanish at International Schools. She graduated from The American Musical and Dramatic Academy in theater dance and from CUNY Queens College as a Linguistics and Classical Voice double-major, studying voice with Andrés Andrade. She recently obtained her Master's in Opera Performance from Yale School of Music. She has performed at Merkin Hall, where she sang the principal role of Kaede in the world premiere of the Japanese opera, "Mumyo and Aizen," and le Poisson Rouge, where she sang "Tehillim" with Face the Music and Alarm Will Sound. Her stage roles include Domina in "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum," Bloody Mary in "South Pacific," Constance in "Dialogues des Carmélites," Lauretta in "Gianni Schicchi" and Titania in Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." As an apprentice artist at Central City Opera (Colorado), she sang Annina in "La Traviata" and la Japonaise in Boismortier's "Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse" and covered Aldonza in "Man of La Mancha."
About Liubo Borissov, Visual Artist
Liubo Borissov is a multimedia artist working at the interface between art, science and technology. He received a doctorate in physics from Columbia University and was a Fellow in the Performing Arts at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. His multimedia collaborations, performances and installations have been exhibited internationally. He is currently an assistant professor at Pratt Institute's Department of Digital Arts.
Yujin Ariza is a violinist, software developer and graphics artist, studying as part of the Columbia-Juilliard Joint Program. As a violinist, he toured with the El Camino Youth Symphony as a guest soloist in Summer 2013, performing in Dvorak Hall of the Rudolfinum in Prague, Grosse Saal of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Slovak Radio Hall in Bratislava and Bela Bartok National Concert Hall in Budapest. He currently studies violin with Mr.
Li Lin at the Juilliard School. Yujin is a recent graduate of Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science, and is a current first-year Masters student at the Juilliard School, studying violin. As a software engineer, he has worked in Snapchat and Whisper and will be working during Summer 2016 as a software engineering intern at Unity Technologies.
This two-part evening marks the release of two solo CDs by Mari Kimura:
"Harmonic Constellations" (New World Records) features Mari Kimura playing works for violin and electronics by American composers Eric Chasalow, Michael Gatonska,
Michael Harrison, Hannah Lash, Eric Moe and herself. Each, according to the liner notes by Allan Kozinn, has a distinctive compositional style, with varying approaches to composing for violin and electronics. (For his full notes, see:
http://www.newworldrecords.org/uploads/filelYLVz.pdf). One of these pieces ("Shinrin-yoku" by Michael Gatonska) was written for Ms. Kimura. Two ("Obey Your Thirst" by Eric Moe and "Harmonic Constellations" by
Michael Harrison) were commissioned by her. The latter is the album's title work. One ("Miele" by Hannah Lash) was swapped for a new vacuum cleaner and is named after the appliance's brand.
"Voyage Apollonian" (Innova) features original compositions by Mari Kimura (using Subharmonics and interactive technology with motion sensor) plus transcriptions of works by some of the champions of Brazilian music, including Egberto Gismonti, Hermeto Pascoal and Joaõ Bosco. Ms. Kimura has long wanted to introduce these works as contemporary classical violin works. The album's title cut is "Voyage Apollonian" by Kimura, a composition that was inspired by a fractal butterfly animation by Ken Perlin, a renowned computer scientist who is also known as a graphic artist for his work in the movie "Tron." In 1997, he won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for his noise and turbulence procedural texturing techniques, which are widely used in film and TV. Perlin's animation, based on a fractal called "Apollonian Gasket," explores the relationship between Dionysus, the god of beautiful chaos, and Apollo, the god of rational beauty.
