UNDERCURRENTS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN MUSIC - A MULTIMEDIA CHAMBER CONCERT
- Sosnoff Theater, Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504 (map)
ASIAN
AMERICAN
VOICES
The second night of China Now featured the festival’s ensemble in residence, the Del Sol String Quartet, and Guggenheim Composer Fellow Jin Hi Kim, in a showcase of Asian American composers of contemporary American music at the Fisher Center at Bard College.
Photos by Karl Rabe
PROGRAM
DEL SOL QUARTET
Takuma Itoh, Picture Brides (2017)
Jungyoon Wie, A Popular Tune (2020)
Erika Oba, Akoya (2020)
Vijay Iyer, Spasm (2021)
Erberk Eryilmaz, Ankara Havasi Goes Bananas (2020)
JIN HI KIM (composer and performer)
A Ritual for Covid-19 (world premiere)
The festival’s ensemble-in-residence, Del Sol, is a vigorous champion of Asian American music. The quartet will perform new compositions by Erberk Eryilmaz, Takuma Itoh, Vijay Iyer, Erika Oba, and Jungyoon Wie, representing many diverse voices to reflect various aspects of Asian American society and history, from the early years of Japanese immigration — with Itoh’s piece Picture Brides — to selections from the quartet’s ‘Joy Project’ — an effort to respond to current social and political change, technology, and artistic innovation.
Jin Hi Kim is an innovative, thought provoking composer and a virtuoso of the komungo, a type of zither from Korea. Kim will perform the world-premiere of her latest work, A Ritual for Covid-19, a multimedia composition inspired by the Korean shamanistic ‘ssitkimkut’ ritual for purifying the spirits of the dead. The work is dedicated to the memory of all the people worldwide who lost their lives during the pandemic, and to the spirit of healing during the apocalyptic years of 2020-21. This performance is created in collaboration with Joe Levassuer (stage and lighting design), Jorge Morales (projection design), and the CultureHub/NY creative team.
featuring
Ensemble-in-residence, China Now Music Festival
Del Sol began as a thought on the night shift at Fermilab. Charlton Lee loved the cutting edge of physics research – always looking for the next discovery, pushing boundaries. But he missed the way music connected people, building community by communicating in ways physics never would. What if he could bring that scientific passion for exploration to a string quartet?
Twenty-six years later, Del Sol is still sharing music that brings out the endorphins. Music that asks why not?
Fascinated by the feedback loop between social change, technology, and artistic innovation, the San Francisco-based ensemble is a leading force in 21st century chamber music - whether introducing Ben Johnston’s microtonal Americana at the Library of Congress, taking Aeryn Santillan’s gun-violence memorial to the streets of the Mission District, exploring Andean soundscapes with Gabriela Lena Frank and traditional musicians, or collaborating with Huang Ruo and the anonymous poets who carved their words into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station during the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The current Del Sol lineup, marked by the arrival of violinist Sam Weiser alongside mainstays Kathryn Bates and Ben Kreith, bring a fresh energy, freedom, and precision to the group.
Recognized as a “vigorous champion of living composers”, Del Sol has premiered hundreds of works by composers including Terry Riley, Gabriela Lena Frank, Frederic Rzewski, Ben Johnston, Chinary Ung, Mason Bates, Tania León, Erberk Eryilmaz, Theresa Wong, Reza Vali, Mohammed Fairouz and Peter Sculthorpe.
With its deep commitment to education, Del Sol has reached thousands of K-12 students through inventive school performances, workshops, coaching, and residencies. The Quartet members also have worked closely with student composers, musicians and faculty artists at universities across the country.
Composer and performer Erberk Eryılmaz is recognized for bringing the energy of Turkish folk music to the concert stage with a creative and dramatic approach. His compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, and the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba. His work, "Was her face the moon or sunlight?", as part of the Moon Arts Project, is expected to be sent to the moon in 2021. He is co-director of Hoppa Project which aims to promote music from Eastern Europe and the Middle East by performing the music of the region with a wide range of styles from folk to newly commissioned contemporary music. erberkeryilmaz.com
Takuma Itoh’s music has been described as “brashly youthful and fresh” (New York Times), and has been featured amongst one of “100 Composers Under 40” on WQXR. In 2018, Itoh was instrumental in creating an innovative education program, Symphony of the Hawaiian Birds, which has since brought over 10,000 young students to hear new orchestral compositions alongside original animations that raise awareness of Hawai‘i’s many endangered bird species. Other recent highlights include a work for Invoke (string quartet with ‘ukulele doubling) American Postcards: Picture Brides (Hawaii 1908-1924) that used photographs collected by historian Barbara Kawakami to tell the story of the first Japanese women immigrants who came to Hawai‘i; Faded Aura for Hub New Music and shakuhachi player Kojiro Umezaki, which was performed around Japan on a tour with the Asia American New Music Institute; a collaboration with the American Wild Ensemble for their tour of Hawai‘i, including a performance at the Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park; and a work for the Del Sol Quartet as part of The Joy Project intended to be performed outdoors where the audience can enjoy while social distancing.
In addition, he has been the recipient of the Barlow Endowment general commission, Music Alive: New Partnerships grant with the Tucson Symphony, the Chamber Music America Classical Commission, the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennell Prize, six ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, and the Leo Kaplan Award. Upcoming commissions include works for the Albany Symphony and the Hawai‘i Symphony.
Itoh is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where he has taught since 2012. He holds degrees from Cornell University, University of Michigan, and Rice University.
Composer-pianist VIJAY IYER (pronounced “VID-jay EYE-yer”) has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in modern music. He was described by Pitchfork as "one of the best in the world at what he does," by the Los Angeles Weekly as “a boundless and deeply important young star,” by the New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” and by Minnesota Public Radio as “an American treasure.” A musical innovator, an active collaborator, and a member of multiple artistic communities, Iyer continues to reimagine the role of the musician in the 21st century. Iyer’s Uneasy, a trio recording made with his friends and collaborators Linda May Han Oh on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, was released by ECM in April 2021 to wide acclaim, the Boston Globe calling it “extraordinary,” and noting it as “another entry in Iyer’s extensive oeuvre, reaffirming his status as one of the most creative figures in improvised music.”
Iyer has been voted DownBeat Magazine's Artist of the Year four times - in 2018, 2016, 2015 and 2012 - and Artist of the Year in Jazz Times' Critics' and Readers' Polls for 2017. Iyer was named a 2017 United States Artists Fellow, a 2013 MacArthur Fellow, and a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Artist. He holds a lifetime appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, with a joint affiliation with the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.
Learn more at https://vijay-iyer.com
Jin Hi Kim, a Guggenheim composer fellow and innovative komungo performer, co-designed the world’s only electric komungo with custom designed computer programs. Her work reflects the duality of her ancient Korean roots and contemporary American society with interdisciplinary works merging Asian mythology and advanced Western technology. The Washington Post wrote, “Her unique vision blends science fiction images, state-of-the-art technology, ancient mythology and timeless music and dance traditions. No other artist is doing work quite like this, and she does it with superb style."
In recent years she has created works with deep concerns about political, environmental, and social issues impacting our lives. Responding to American wars in Asia, she has composed “One Sky II” for Orchestra, dedicated to the reunification of Korea (2018) and “Child of War” for Chorus, dedicated to Kim Phuc who is known as ‘the girl in the picture’ during the Vietnam War (2014). She created “Sound Calendar of the Year 2018” documenting sounds and mix of the year’s environmental catastrophes, and “A Ritual for Covid-19” attempting to heal the epochal year of 2020.
Kim has received Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and won the Wolff Ebermann Prize at the International Theater Institute, Germany. She was Fulbright Specialist to Vietnam, and McKnight Visiting Composer with the American Composers Forum. She is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts, American Composers Orchestra fellowship as well as fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Italy, Asian Cultural Council, and Freeman Artist-In-Residence at Cornell University. She is Adjunct Professor of Music at Wesleyan University.
Berkeley-based Erika Oba is a composer, pianist/flutist, and educator. As a composer she has written works for big band, small jazz ensembles, chamber groups, dance and theater. She is active as a performer on both piano and flute, and is a member of the Montclair Women’s Big Band, Ends Meat’ Catastrophe Jazz Ensemble, electro-jazz duo Rice Kings, and The Sl(e)ight Ensemble. She has worked as a dance accompanist for Mills College and Berkeley Ballet Theater, and is currently a resident music director with Berkeley Playhouse’s Youth Conservatory Program. In addition to her own private teaching studio, she is a private jazz piano instructor for UC Berkeley’s Music Department. Erikaoba.com
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Jungyoon Wie is a composer, educator, pianist, and producer. Themes of identity have been the center of her compositional journey, and her current research involves creating a short film in collaboration with filmmaker Toko Shiiki, dancers Rie Kim and Jun Wakabayashi, and Converge String Quartet which explores shifting dynamics of identity, otherness, and the marginalized experience of women. This film highlights a string quartet by Ms. Wie, han, which uses Korean, folk, traditional, European, American, and contemporary expressive modalities. jungyoonwie.com/
Read about Fisher Center’s Covid-19 Health and Safety Protocols on their FAQs page, HERE.
Acknowledgements
Picture Brides ukulele generously provided by Blackbird Guitars. Images courtesy of the Barbara Kawakami Collection.
A Ritual for COVID-19 was made possible with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts New Work New England program, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, Seedlings Foundation, Fund for the Arts at NEFA, and individual donors. This project is supported by the Rebecca Blunk Fund.
Conceived by Jin Hi Kim
Music composition and performance: Jin Hi Kim (electric kŏmungo, buk, and voice)
Stage and lighting design: Joe Levasseur
COVID-19 documentary photo collection and organizing: Jin Hi Kim
CultureHub New York creative team
Production director: DeAndrea Anthony
Projectionist: Sangmin Chae
Video artist: Jean Garcia