Thursday, March 5, 2020, 8 p.m.

COMPOSER PORTRAITS

Dai Fujikura

2019-20
SEASONAbout the ProgramThis season Miller Theatre celebrates the 20th Anniversary of Composer Portraits.
Writer Lara Pellegrinelli has been commissioned to create a snapshot of each composer
in words through an exploration of their experiences of community, viewed through theprism of new music.
“I thought it sounded like melting
chocolates,” the composer Dai Fujikura
says during an animated phone
conversation from his home in South
East London. “Or melting cheese. There’s
something quite universal about an image
like that, which is also very sensual. And I
don’t even like chocolate all that much.”Fujikura has been describing aneffect in his ensemble work secret forest(2008), the closing piece on tonight’s
program. Through experiments withthe physicality of bowing, Fujikura
created against-the-grain patterns forthe strings separately from the pitch
sonorities that they play—and which
systematically wind down, like a cassettein a player whose battery is dying. This
phase transition, from solid to warm andviscous, opens a work in which a grove ofsounds is explored from many angles: thestring section occupies the stage, while
its wind and brass counterparts tenderthroughout the audience. The bassoon, asolitary passer-by, meets with a sudden
downpour brought on by pizzicato tremolo(percussively plucked, “trembling”
strings) and a bevy of rainsticks.
secret forest is less programmaticin orientation than kinesthetic: anmillertheatre.com

abstraction of what can be sensed by the
body. As a composer, Fujikura typicallydevelops works through his experiencesof synesthesia, defined loosely as a“coming together of the senses” (fromthe Greek syn: “together” and aesthesis:“sensation”), in which two or more of
the body’s senses are automaticallylinked. Perhaps the best known musicalsynesthete is the Russian composer
Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915), whoseclavier à lumières projected colored
lights during his symphonic poem
“Prometheus: Poem of Fire.” Althoughsome experts have raised doubts about
Scriabin’s associations because of his
particular visual vocabulary, numerous
other figures—including RimskyKorsakov, Liszt, Duke Ellington, andPharrell—have all detailed experiencesof synesthesia, which is likely to be much
more common than previously thought.
“Often my associations are tactile,”says Fujikura. “The touch of fingertips isextremely important; my orchestrations
are very much based on that. A harmony
can be like putting your cheek on a cold
concrete surface in hot summer. As I
compose, I might think, If you eat thissound, what would happen in your mouth?

Maybe it’s crispy on the outside and there’s Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan
something warm on the inside. Does
Theater’s Born Creative Festival.
something ooze out of it? The music of
A hunger for tactile discovery may besome composers leaves me with a very
what drives Fujikura to keep composing
bad aftertaste, and therefore I cannot likefor individual instruments, uncovering
it. Or it might smell bad.”their untapped potential systematically
In fact, Fujikura once effectively
even while he is at work developing larger
ended a panel discussion in which he wasprojects like A Dream of Armageddon
participating by disclosing that to him,
(2018-19), his third opera, which awaits
the music of Brahms
its premiere at thesmelled like a secondNew National Tokyo
Sensory
explorationishand bookshop. The
Theater in November.
a connective thread inaudience roared with
Fujikura has written
Fujikura’scompositional
laughter. “I’m not saying
solos and concertos
process, providing him with
I don’t like this kind offor contrabass flute,anintuitive
frameworkbookshop,” he asserts
bassoon, recorder,that grounds his
now, with what might
guitar, trombone, bass
musicallanguage.
be a hint of irreverence
clarinet, shakuhachi,
in his voice. “I do. It has
double bass, andbooks that are brown attuba—an unusual
the edges. You know, it’s a little damp, aarray. His Flute Concerto won the 2019little moldy.”
Ivors Composer Award for chambermusic, and his Shamisen Concerto hasreceived nine performances since its
Sensory exploration is a connective
premiere last summer at Lincoln Center’s
thread in Fujikura’s compositional
Mostly Mozart Festival. He is currently
process, providing him with an intuitive
composing a viola concerto for Anne
framework that grounds his musicalLeilehua Lanzilotti as part of her
language. What he develops from that
20/19 Project.
foundation feels actively inquisitive in
Rebekah Heller, bassoonist andnature, with Fujikura maintaining his
co-artistic director of the International
sense of wonder—and a sense of humor
Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), credits—into his third decade as an artist. His
Fujikura with “rethinking instruments
innate curiosity has been rewarded withfrom the inside out.” The ensemble has
numerous honors and accolades: in 2017,
been working with him since 2003, when
he received the Silver Lion Award from the he was one of the first winners of their
Venice Biennale for innovation in music,
Young Composers Call for Scores. His
the same year he was named the Artistic
contributions became part of the ground

Miller Theatre at Columbia University

from which that dynamic musicians’
collective was launched, helping totransform a bunch of recent conservatory
graduates into the commissioners andcollaborators who reshaped the entire
new music scene.
Dan Lippel, ICE’s guitarist, says that
Fujikura has “an almost scientific wayof approaching how different types ofmusical gestures lie on an instrument,
whether they’re based on effects or
extended techniques. He is able to build
whole sonic phenomena out of those
textures.” Fujikura’s label Minabel is an
imprint of and distributed by Lippel’s New
Focus Recordings.
Fujikura’s explorations often map
onto natural phenomena, evident fromthe works on tonight’s program, including
secret forest. Minina (2013), one in a seriesof pieces dedicated to his now eight-yearold daughter, uses a quintet to explore thearrival of a newborn baby, as well as her
mysterious, fleeting expressions. silenceseeking solace, written in collaboration
with poet Harry Ross, Fujikura’s librettist
for A Dream of Armageddon, abstracts
vocal utterances—whispers, percussive
consonants, and elongated vowels—into
a language for the singer’s accompanying
strings. Gliding Wings, featuring a pairof clarinets with ensemble, evokes thefluidity of collective bird flight, with theplayers sonically tethered to each other ina single but elastic body.
The earliest work on the program,abandoned time (2003), is perhaps
less probative, but for good reason. It

millertheatre.com

captures the memory of a teenaged boy’s
aspiration to play the electric guitar (andimpress girls)—more precisely, the kindof electric guitar heard in bands like Van
Halen, Iron Maiden, or Fujikura’s thenfavorite, Guns & Roses. “The Use Your
Illusion albums were really big when I
was a teenager,” he confirms. “I even had
a T-shirt.”
Lippel, who will perform thatcomposition tonight, sees it as a milestone
in the 40-year history of the electricguitar’s integration into new music. “Withabandoned time, there’s an impressivesynthesis between a guitar part from arock vernacular point of view, and theensemble’s musical language, whichcomes from a modernist, Boulez-ian
aesthetic perspective,” he says. “There’s
also a Carlos Santana moment at the end,
where I get to play these wailing bends.”
As a relative newcomer tocontemporary music, the electric guitar
does not warrant Fujikura’s reinvention.
Instead, he plays with abandoned time’s
overall sound design, closely miking allof the individual acoustic instruments.
Through his use of amplification,
Fujikura blends the ensemble’s tonal
palette with the electric guitar’s, whichbecomes distorted in a sound world
rendered hyperreal.

Though Fujikura pursued his formal
training in the United Kingdom, he
was born in Japan and began his musiceducation as a child in Osaka. He learned

Bach, Beethoven, and the other heroes ofIn his early teens, Fujikura had
the classical canon at the direction of abeen enamored with the music ofstrict piano teacher. Chastised when heDavid Sylvian, leader of the New Wavealtered bits of the repertoire he deemedband Japan, and electronic pioneer
boring, Fujikura discovered that he could
Ryuichi Sakamoto; eventually he wouldside-step such criticism by playing his
collaborate with both of them. He also
own music. (Apparently, he disliked
loved the immersive world of film scoring,
Kabalevsky so much that he referred him
especially the soundtracks for horror
as “Baka-levsky”; baka is the Japanesefilms like Alien 3 and Interview with aword for idiot.) Although Fujikura’s
Vampire by Elliot Goldenthal. But his
mother still insisted on his disciplined
engagement with the music of György
practice of the masters, she also
Ligeti (1923-2006), Tōru Takemitsu
encouraged her son’s newfound interest(1930-1996), and Pierre Boulez (1925by reading him a set of2016) while he wascomposer biographiesat Trinity ultimately“The music I want to makefor children. “I realized,
determined his
is like the world I want to
They’re all Germancourse. In his second
live in: a utopian world.”
speaking,” Fujikura
year there, Fujikura—Dai Fujikura
remembers. “I thought,
became the youngestIf I go to Germany, I will
ever winner of the
be a composer.”
Serocki International
His parents reasoned that it would be
Composers’ Competition (1998). As amore practical for him to learn English
foreigner who could not work legally, he
first and, at 15, sent him to be a music
depended on such winnings simply to pay
scholar at Dover College in Kent, which
his rent in the years to come.
he describes as a “Harry Potter-style
In 2003, he was named a finalist for theboarding school.” Although he would later Lucerne Festival Academy’s composition
audition for universities in Germany, heproject, earning the commission thatfound himself more at home stylistically
produced Stream State and a workshop
at Trinity College of Music, where heof the piece with Boulez, arguably
studied with Daryl Runswick for his
the single-most important figure inbachelor’s degree, then at the Royal
contemporary music during the second
College of Music with Edwin Roxburgh
half of the 20th Century. Boulez went
for his master’s, and finally at King’s
on to conduct its world premiere, andCollege, London with George Benjamincontinued to support Fujikura’s work,(to whom his clarinet duo Twin Tweets,with subsequent commissions for his own
the precursor for Gliding Wings, wasEnsemble Intercontemporain and 80th
dedicated) for his Ph.D.
birthday celebration. One imagines theMiller Theatre at Columbia University

elder statesman’s influence on Fujikura
through his pristine voicings and spatial
orientation, to which Fujikura applied achildlike sense of play. Boulez urged him“to always be curious.”

Asked about the role that community
plays in his work, Fujikura does notreflexively turn the conversation towards
the composers or performers with whom
he has longstanding relationships, though
they clearly have his affection.
He began his life in one place, one far
removed from the wellspring of classicalmusic; he now lives happily in another.
He thinks of his profession globally, withhis work taking him most frequently tocontinental Europe, Japan, and the UnitedStates. Although some of Fujikura’s
pieces are related to Japanese subjects
or written for native instruments, heresists simplistic notions of identity;
he only began to learn about traditional
Japanese music when he attended thesummer program at the Internationales
Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD) in
Germany during his twenties.
Where you are from, he suggests, isnot something to be proud of. It’s purely
accidental. “My childhood dream was tobe a composer, not a Japanese composer”
he says. “I want to make sure my music
has no country.”
Fujikura’s transcendence of national
borders is mirrored in his home life.
His wife, Milena Mihaylova, an artist, is
Bulgarian; their daughter, Mina, born inmillertheatre.com

the United Kingdom, could theoreticallyhold three passports until she reaches
adulthood. (The family took a vacation
this year with a small windfall resulting
from the news of Brexit and a subsequent
drop in the exchange rate, while he was
waiting for commission funds fromoverseas. “I have to thank them fordelaying my payments,” he kids.)
He works from their apartment every
day, an activity he likens to breathing.
“By the time I realize it, I’m alreadydoing it,” he says. He Skypes frequently
with musicians, sending them screen
shots of scores in process and listening
in on rehearsals. He goes out little, hesays, meeting people only when hepicks up his daughter from school
most days.
“The music I want to make is like theworld I want to live in: a utopian world,”
he says. “I don’t want to see immigration
officers in my utopia. It’s not that I want
to feel like a god and recreate the wholeworld. It’s more like what happens when
you move into a new apartment and makeit look nice, so you can invite someone
you like over for coffee. secret forest is likethat. For the duration of the piece, forthat 17 minutes, the birds sing the way
I like my birds to sing. And I can be in aforest where my nose isn’t stuffed up withallergies. It’s just my little place.”
Notes from the composer
Minina (2013)
Minina is a chamber work based onmaterials from the symphony concertante

Mina, the first piece I composed after thebirth of my first child. I started a monthafter she (“Mina”) was born. When I
completed the piece, she was a fivemonth-old baby!
I was truly inspired by attending thechildbirth (not that I did anything there),
especially by the sight of a newborn baby. I
was amazed how one’s life on earth starts
so suddenly. This piece begins as if it starts
in the middle; five musicians play together
at first, as if they are one instrument,
acting like a baby new to life. The music
shifts from one mood to another rapidly,
just as if you were looking at the baby’s
face, which displays four expressions in
one second.
In Minina, there is a section where thebass flute solo is accompanied by prepared
dulcimer and bells and so on; I imagined
it as a dreaming section. It is strange
looking at a one-month-old baby: you canclearly tell she is dreaming, but about
what, I wonder. She has only been here
for a month; what can she see, to makeher smile or cry, so vivid is her dream. I
found this experience both mysterious andpeaceful, looking over the crib in which
she is sleeping.
Mina was composed with large
sections at its beginning and in the middle
featuring just the quintet of soloists, aswell as its cadenza, on which I drew for
Minina. Both pieces were written forfive musicians from ICE—a chamber
ensemble with whom I have a longstanding relationship and with whom I
can work most intimately. Despite thefact we have a vast ocean between us(I live in London, ICE is in New York),
we communicated via Skype and email,recording samples on phones andcomputers and sending them back andforth; I felt as if they were in my room in
London while I composed. I think that thisis the best composer-player relationshipyou can ask for!
So obviously this piece was written
during a very special time of my life.
silence seeking solace (2013)This is one of the many works on which
I have collaborated with poet Harry
Ross. As is usual for us, we created themusic and text almost simultaneously,
so that the sound of the English language
matches the sound of the music and theuse of voice exactly. For instance, thepassages of whispers and non-vibrato
are reflected by the strings’ harmonics orphrasing, and the words set to this bear
the sound world in mind. In certain places
I limited the number of consonants that
Harry could use. In others I asked him forwords to create more percussive sounds
that would relate to the ensemble texture
and would be a little like “white noise”
when sung quickly.
The grist for the work comes from thesculptures Frau im Fels (Woman in theRock) and Sphaera by the contemporary
German artist Stephan Balkenhol(b. 1957). Harry Ross visited Salzburg to
see these sculptures before we started towrite. I am not sure these two sculptures
are connected, but we imagined them toMiller Theatre at Columbia University

be. silence seeking solace is written fromthe point of view of the woman in the rock,who oversees the rather ordinary looking
everyman standing atop the golden spherein the middle of the city.
Harry writes, “I visited Salzburg lastyear overland from Gülük in Turkey,
traveling 2600km via a large collectionof different modes of transport. I feltthat the subject matter merited thismodern-day pilgrimage. When I arrived
in Salzburg, I attempted to find both
sculptures with no map and asked
everyone I met their opinions of these art
works. Their answers were unanimously
complimentary—it was wonderful
to experience such wholehearted
engagement and response to a public
art commission—and it was great to beso welcomed by so many people. WhenI finally arrived at Kapitelplatz, I sat
opposite Sphaera. Something about thework made me feel very humbled. I basked
in the sun and reflected on the many
people I had met on my journey, and theenthusiasm of the people of Salzburg forthe art works in their city. I hope that
our work pays suitable homage to Mr.
Balkenhol’s wonderful pieces, the people
who commissioned them, and the people
who live with them.”
Gliding Wings (2019)
I had written a clarinet duo Twin Tweets(2019) for my teacher George Benjamin’s
60th anniversary, and I had asked ICE’s
Joshua Rubin if he’d be interested intaking a look at the score, since themillertheatre.com

ensemble has two clarinetists. We knoweach other well, and, when he didn’t
write back right away, I thought maybe
something was wrong. But then he told
me he had a better idea. What if I could
expand it to something bigger: a piece fortwo clarinets and ensemble? Ten years
ago, members of ICE told me about Miller
Theatre’s Composer Portraits series,
and it’s amazing that I’m now having
this portrait concert, and that I havethis commission.
I immediately thought that a clarinet
duo could be something like two birds
gliding in the sky. I don’t particularly havemuch interest in bird song, but I am always
interested in the movements of birds.
How freely they fly together with otherbirds, gracefully moving together but
not completely so, as if completing eachother’s movements.
Flying together, but not fighting tobe leader. (Unlike humans, birds,
insects, and fish are clever: they don’t
fight for leadership, especially when they
are swarming.)
Freely flying, but then always movingaround each other. Free, but with an
overall shape.
This led to the clarinets moving ina similar direction for the most part,
sometimes like they are flying very far
above the ground and coming down
towards us, closer to the earth.
Never stopping, flying very fast,and yet very calmly.
I thought the clarinet would be
the best instrument to do this, as ithas a vast range, and each register hasvery different sounds. In the same waythat birds fly, the clarinets cross pitch
registers, from very high to low, movingaround, flying around the middle register,sometimes together, sometimes apart,but always complementing each other.
If we were like birds, free andcompleting one other, the world would bea more peaceful place.
Materials from Twin Tweets havebecome part of Gliding Wings, but I havealso written a great deal of new material,
extending the original duo to make acompletely new work in the end. The
ensemble expands the clarinets’ material
at the start of the piece, beginning togrow as if it has a mind of its own. What it
creates influences the clarinets, with eachfeeding the other musical ideas so that thematerials between the duo and the groupare gradually shared.
I always find it so much morechallenging to re-compose a work fromexisting materials. (I guess I’m a composer,
and it’s more natural for me to make musicfrom scratch.) This was a very fulfillingchallenge for me.

after I moved from Japan to the UK, living
in a dormitory where every single boy
aspired to play the guitar. I remember
hearing the same pop music phrases
played badly over and over again from theneighboring rooms.
When composing abandoned time, I
wanted to use the classic techniques ofrock guitar music—finger tapping, palmmutes, bending the note upwards bypushing the string upwards—all those
things which you can hear and watch on arock music video; it is very different fromthe pianissimo way of using electric guitarthat I sometimes see in contemporary
music. Vibraphone and piano materials
are an extension of the harmonics playedon electric guitar, and some stretchedharmony played by the ensemble is anextension of the “wah-wah” effect of a
distortion pedal on an electric guitar.
I am writing this program note in2012, looking back at what was in my mind
when I wrote the work in 2004, looking
even further back at my high school
experience in 1993. It all feels
very nostalgic in a distorted way, as if
I’m looking through a prism.

abandoned time (2004; rev. 2006)
This piece was written back in 2004. I
think this was my first-ever commission
from Japan, which is the country of mybirth. I remember that they asked me if
I could include a guitar, and I decided
that what I actually wanted to write forwas distorted electric rock guitar. I was
thinking about my high school life justsecret forest (2008)
Just before I composed this work, I had
written a short viola piece called flux.
In it, I focused on the “bowing” of the
instrument and the player’s right arm
because I had used a lot of “plucking”
string techniques (like pizzicati and also
playing with a guitar plectrum) in the past.
I began with composing the rhythm ofMiller Theatre at Columbia University

the bowing, and then wrote notes (using
another way to organize pitches) withno relationship to the bowing. This solo
viola piece had quite a cool and unnaturalsound. Then I imagined what would
happen if a whole string section were toplay like this (unnatural bowing). So I
began composing secret forest. The bowing
rhythm of the string section is almost
always in unison.
I have an image that there are ropes
between the tip of the conductor’s fingers
and the bows of the string players.
Furthermore, I imagine marionettes:
players resembling puppets.
Another thing I try to express is theprocess of changing texture: how melodic
material changes to energetic marcato andvice versa. This idea originated from theexperience of working in the electronics
studio, spending many hours listening toand shaping the tiny sound I just created. I
think it is interesting when the conductor
increases and decreases the tempo
dramatically (one beat of the conductor
equals one bow stroke), and I put this idea
into the work to show change.
In addition to the “marionettes,”
there are woodwinds and brass in theauditorium, and their role is completely
different from the musicians (strings)
on stage. In my previous spatial works, I
have tried to produce an effect of feelingmillertheatre.com

as if instruments located separately in ahall were playing together on the stage
by using monitors. In this piece, I havean image of strings that reach from the
top of the conductor’s finger and baton
to woodwinds and brass beyond theaudience. In my mind, these woodwinds
and brass are the “forest,” and the bassoon
located in the middle of them is a “person”
who walks into the forest.
When I go to a forest, my nose isblocked and gets itchy because of anallergy. Birds sing (if you can call thatsinging!) annoyingly and insects maketerrible noise. These insects’ sounds may
be thought to be beautiful in Japaneseculture, but I want to say, “Could you
make a little more beautiful sound?
Maybe vary it a little?” Therefore, I’drather see the beautiful pictures ofnature in National Geographic. This“secret forest” is an imaginary forest
where birds and insects make only myfavorite sounds, and my nose gets neverblocked. I feel really comfortable there.
I have composed this piece in my house,a tiny, noisy London flat that is the exact
opposite of the “secret forest.”
Lara Pellegrinelli is a scholar and a journalist,
who contributes to NPR and The New YorkTimes. She teaches at The New School andBard’s Microcollege at Brooklyn Public Library.