Japanese koto virtuoso and composer Yumi Kurosawa explores a musical perspective on the Japanese and Chinese art that influenced painter Tomioka Tessai. Kurosawa performs on a modern twenty-string koto and is joined by violinist Emil Israel Chudnovsky and Chinese flute (dizi) virtuoso Yimin Miao. Their program features music from Kyoto and China in addition to new music composed by Kurosawa for this event.
Since winning the National Japanese Koto Competition and moving to the United States, Kurosawa has performed at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Apollo Theater, and Blue Note (New York), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), and venues across Europe. She has appeared with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Swan in the United Kingdom (where she premiered Daron Hagen’s koto concerto Genji), and the Houston Grand Opera.
The New York Times called Kurosawa “an inventive, seemingly cosmopolitan composer . . . [who] presents her themes gracefully and then undertakes intricate, sometimes adventurous variations, drawing on a timbral palette that ranged from warm and rounded to bright and metallic.” All About Jazz noted that, when she plays, “the koto’s notes flow like the water of a stream in a Zen garden, building melodic paths in a logic that resembles European medieval and Renaissance music.”
Violinist Emil Israel Chudnovsky recently made his debut at the Seoul Arts Center with the KammerSymphonie Berlin and his inaugural recording with the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra. He has also performed as soloist with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco in Mexico and the Orquesta de la Ciudad de los Reyes in Lima, Peru. He has appeared in chamber music ensembles at the Newport Music Festival and Germany’s Henselt Festival and in concert at New York’s Merkin Hall and Wigmore Hall in London.
Chinese woodwind virtuoso Yimin Miao performed throughout Asia, Europe, and North America with the Shanghai Traditional Orchestra, has appeared at Carnegie Hall with the China National Orchestra, and is the founder of the Ba Ban Chinese Music Society of New York. In 2014 he performed for Huang Ruo’s opera Dr. Sun Yat-sen at the Santa Fe Opera.
The concert is presented in conjunction with Meeting Tessai: Modern Japanese Art from the Cowles Collection. |