Remembering Kikuko

Check out Home Revealed opening at the renamed Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle. The show includes artwork by Kikuoko Dewa created for Ji Mo 寂寞: the Stillness of Solitude. Kikuko passed away in mid-February earlier this year.

Kikuko’s 10-foot long shibori installation was a strong, silent presence throughout a work I created as composer-in-residence with Portland Taiko in 2007. Her art for Ji Mo 寂寞: The Stillness of Solitude floated above an incense burner to provide a connection between the performers, audience, stage and heaven. Towards the end of the show, I would touch the ball at the bottom of the bamboo shibori. It was a pleasure to spin the installation every night and feel it shimmer.

More about Kikuko can be read in A Way of Life: A Thread That Connects by Lorraine Pai.

Home Revealed opens Thursday and runs through April 17, 2011. Along with Kikuko, the artworks of Zuolie Deng, Andrew Hida, Meng Huang, Alan Lau, Amy Nikaitani and Dean Wong are featured.

The Wing
719 South King Street
Seattle WA 98104 USA
(206) 623-5124

 

Portland Taiko & SF Taiko Dojo

In 1997, I visited San Francisco for a lesson with Tanaka Sensei. For those who don’t know, Tanaka Sensei is considered the Grand Master of taiko in North America. He started SF Taiko Dojo in 1968.

I had heard that Tanaka Sensei was a strict teacher. I arrived early and watched a class taught by the performing members. Sitting on the floor, I was surprised by all the egg cartons that lined the concrete walls of the dojo. I sat politely trying to watch the class and not think of eggs.

During my lesson, Tanaka Sensei sized me up. Upon realizing that I was Chinese American rather than Japanese, he told me that I must explore Chinese philosophy. He revealed his fascination with Qi Gong and acknowledged the influence of Chinese aesthetics on taiko. I left the lesson empowered, not realizing how significant taiko and the incorporation of Chinese thought would become on my music.

This weekend, Portland Taiko hosts joint performances with SF Taiko Dojo. Michelle Fujii, Kelsey Furuta and Toru Watanabe of Portland Taiko perform my composition News, for bamboo/paper/taiko. The work combines instruments common to both China and Japan within a structure that allows the trio to think about and explore sounds and movements that are both contemporary and classical. The performers use their bachi as writing utensils. The paper floats then flickers. Drum patterns morph from set rhythms into poetic ambiguity.

Both Tanaka Sensei and Portland Taiko have taught me the importance of having a unique contribution within a community. Check out the performance:

Taiko Unleashed
02 October 2010, 8PM
03 October 2010, 2PM
Newmark Theatre, Portland OR

 

Thoughts about the TBA Festival opening weekend

Last Thursday, I hitched a ride to Portland for PICA’s annual TBA (Time-Based Art) Festival. Close to midnight, I wandered through the free opening night party at Washington High School (built in 1909/closed in 1981). The ominous brick venue was renamed THE WORKS (yes, all caps, dunno why). TBA Fest volunteers were a harried bunch like chaperones at a party where they’d rather be drinking.

Some volunteers abused their black PICA t-shirts telling visitors to clear out of art installation rooms. Other folks were too polite, leading me down hallways searching for a coat check that didn’t exist. Eventually, I found myself outside the main auditorium where punksters Japanther and Nightshade shadow puppeteers tried to out-rock the crowd.

The audience won. Halfway through Japanther’s set, auditorium lights went on and the crowd stormed the stage and tore the shadow puppet sheet down. The flimsy separation between art and life was revealed.

I was in the beer garden where the concert was projected through a cyclone fence. Watching from this vantage point with the ambient audio of drunken conversations plus aroma of the nearby taco truck was an auspicious start to this year’s festival.

I didn’t intend to write so much about the opening, yet this encapsulated the first weekend of performances for me. With an empty high school as festival headquarters, an adolescent awkwardness and curiosity whetted my apetite for what was to come.

Artistic director Cathy Edwards describes the theme of TBA 2010 as “storytelling.” This is an apt description. (Read more in Portland Monthly, where writers Claudia La Rocco and Anne Adams have been posting insightful entries about the festival.)

Performances I attended ranged from the highly-saturated, multiple narrative threads of The Wooster Group’s interactive 360-degree film collage There is Still Time… Brother and Dana Hanson’s work-in-progress absurdist-rock-dance-theater-elegy Gloria’s Cause to the singular narratives of Jérôme Bel’s direction of dancer Cédric Andrieux in a work about Cédric Andrieux dancing and Mike Daisey’s heart-opening tirade The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

Daisey and Bel’s work touched me with their no-nonsense staging and direct deliveries. Andrieux performed on a bare stage with a bottle of water and gym bag, Daisey performed seated at a table with a few sheets of paper.

One more note from my experience last weekend – for those of you at Mike Barber’s Ten Tiny Dances 22, you’ll remember the orange. For those of you not there, Ten Tiny ended with Daisey spitting an orange into the sold-out crowd. Need I say more? GO. The TBA Festival runs through September 19th in Portland.

 

New Finds with Old Friends

The other night, I met with Kris and Hiro at Native Foods in Westwood. We talked about Björk’s interview on NPR and Raghava KK’s talk on TED. It’s always exciting to share new artistic finds with old friends.

I worked with Kris on Two by Four in 2003. The music features him singing the Japanese and Latin names for stars. I was reminded about how attentive to invention I was during that time. I composed Two by Four in August, while I was relocating from Los Angeles to New York, after visiting On Ensemble in Mount Shasta.

Kris continues to be thoughtful and rigorous in his practice as a musician. Meeting with longtime artistic friends like him refreshes my intellectual rigour and aesthetic excitement as a composer. This is an especially significant reminder during the transition from summer into winter, in this time of gathering crops.

Two by Four — hear an excerpt, see the score and read details at
HearByron.com/TwobyFour.aspx

 

Wherefore Art New Opera?

I used to be concerned by Stuck Elevator. After all, this work hovered awkwardly outside opera, musical theatre and performance art. Hip hop writer Aaron Jafferis and I nonetheless continue to develop this project encouraged by our experience last month.

Stuck Elevator was developed in June as part of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven. Director Chay Yew started the workshop process with the question: Is this an opera or a musical?

Aaron and I decided not to answer this question but rather focus on character and narrative. Performer Francis Jue played the Chinese take-out guy stuck in an elevator with nuance, intelligence and humor. Music director Perry So helped with the clarity of what I was composing. The comic-rap-scrap-metal string/percussion music came alive through Perry’s conducting.

These past few weeks, Aaron and I heightened the drama through surprising yet conventional ways. For example, the bladder rap now has a workable groove and we have a sketch of a rapping General Tso battling our singing delivery man. The most exciting discoveries for me included figuring out ways to integrate rap with classical music and learning how to earn a musical moment. Now, I consider adding a beat-boxer and bass to the instrumentation of violin, cello, percussion, and bicycle wheel.

Anne Midgette wrote recently in The Washington Post (Is anybody listening?) about how contemporary American opera faces a crossroads because of audience expectations, unwieldy budgets, the question of genres and the paradox of presenters. How can new opera survive within outmoded infrastructures?

For me, being part of the Yale Institute for Music Theatre felt like camping out at the crossroads. Aaron and I chose to inhabit the unknown and write what the characters and story needed rather than what budgets or presenters wanted. The audience at the two sold-out showings provided a helpful gauge. Between the two performances, we switched songs around and inserted new material. The work made more sense after these changes. One audience member wrote:

I was not looking forward to watching a man go berserk in a confined space…. but what a miracle worker you are — you managed to make his confinement very real but bearable. His flights of  fancy, his dreams, his sense of humor, his conversations with his wife and child, pulled me into his life while sympathizing with his predicament.

Yale offered a support team that included vocal coach/rehearsal pianist Andrew Byrne, sound designer Hillary Charnas, percussionist Candy Chiu, violinist Sun Min Hwang, cellist Alvin Wong, mentor Scott Frankel, co-producer Belina Mizrahi, stage manager Maria Cantin, and production assistant Greg Nobile. Aaron and I had access to two grand pianos, rehearsal rooms and printers for our revisions which helped us learn more about how to make Stuck Elevator compelling.

Producer Beth Morrison and artistic director Mark Brokaw have created a viable solution to incubate new opera even if we choose not to define the work as an opera or musical. Additional kudos to Mary Lou Aleskie and Cathy Edwards at Arts/Ideas for believing in Stuck Elevator. Far from concerned, I am now energized by this work knowing that growing pains are necessary when stretching existing systems of music, genre and presenting.