Enjoy!

Aaron did a fantastic job, and you can hear the whole program here, but, for some reason, he’s passed the baton (the figurative baton) back to me.

Anyway here’s TONGTOKKUNG:

TONGTOKKUNG – Simon Hutchinson

Esther Fredrickson, flute;
Jannie Wei, violin;
Katie White, viola;
Kelly Quesada, cello.

One of the great influences and inventions of Western Music is its notation system. This system of recording a document of a musical work on paper allowed composers to explore complex counterpoint and harmony and convey these ideas to other musicians. From the perspective of world music, however, this system also has its limitations, and these shortcomings become more obvious when we notice that Western Music is primitive in its exploration of timbre, microtonal inflection, and rhythm relative to some other cultures’ traditions.

While I still use Western notation, I hope to explore some more complex rhythmic ideas in my piece, TONGTOKKUNG. We open with an uneven meter of seven beats, not uncommon in the rhythmic explorations of 20th-century composers, but then that rhythm switches to a traditional Korean rhythm, tongtokkung, a far more complex pattern of 24 beats. The piece then switches between these two ideas, and, to my ears, the “uneven” seven beats becomes a point of rest compared to the intensity of the tongtokkung.

When composing for soloist and electronics, I often approach pieces as concerti, with the live performer conversing with an electronic “ensemble.” Traditionally, this genre has given composers the opportunity to explore the relationship between an individual and society as well as provide discourse on the importance of both individual and social expression and contentment. The introduction of the soloist’s doppelgänger, a supernatural duplicate, turns this piece into a kind of double concerto, with the soloist faced not only with society but with the implications of the spectral double, supporting or undermining the efforts of the individual to find a place in the social world.

A very belated update! As always, my internet presence has fallen victim to the trappings of my real-life presence. I have had some wonderful performances in the last few months, including two performances of my latest electro-acoustic piece, Doppelganger for Bassoon and Electronics performed by Aaron Pergram. We’re just working together now to put the finishing touches on our studio recording of the piece and then I’m looking forward to sharing it.

In the meantime, here’s a live recording of a fun piece I performed with Wes Price at the TaiHei Ensemble concert on November 5th:

Cowboys and Samurais: Blues for Guitar and Shamisen (2011)

Wesley Price, Guitar
Simon Hutchinson, Shamisen

Instead, this summer, I got back to focusing on shamisen, studying with my teacher to learn (among other things) a new piece, Senboku Nikata Bushi. Now, at the end of the summer, I think I’ve finally got a grip on this piece (or at least I know what I need to practice from here on out).

Two months of practicing two hours a day = one two-minute piece… that sounds about right.

Along with all the practicing I managed to get out for a few volunteer performances in Iwate Prefecture (Japan). The last of which was at a temporary housing complex for people who displaced by the tsunami in March.

Although I haven’t put a single note to paper since August, I definitely don’t feel my time was wasted, but, with school starting again in a week, it’s time to get back to being a composer, and now, with a head full of ideas (and a head full of that song, Senboku Nikata Bushi), I’m ready to get back to work.

Stay tuned for such pieces as: “Cowboys and Samurais: Blues for Guitar and Shamisen” (with art by Christopher Hoover), “Sea Garden” a song cycle written for Katherine Price on texts by H.D., and the “School Song” from my ongoing opera project ONODA with libretto by Katherine Hollander.

In the meantime, I was thankful this spring for two wonderful performances of bioMechanics my new piece for sax, bassoon, and electronics by the Post-Haste Reed Duo. I hope to be able to share a recording soon.

As I had two recitals last month to fulfill my academic obligations, it has taken me a while to get back to the real work of being a composer, which is, as far as I can tell, composing and self-promotion.

While I get myself ready for composing, here is some self-promotion in the form of three videos from performances that I received at the Music Today Festival in February and March.

The first is the TaiHei Ensemble‘s performance of an aria from the opera that I’m working on (with the working title ONODA) in collaboration with librettist Katherine Hollander. Rebecca Stuhlbarg, mezzo-soprano guest artist, gave a wonderful performance of the quirky self-introduction of Suzuki.

When I was a babe
they put me in a box.
They said I was a key
and the whole world was a lock.
I tumbled in the lock,
a babe no more than two,
I opened up the door
and I went through.

La, la, la,
la, la, la!
I’m looking for a yeti
and a panda.
La, la, la,
la, la, la!
A yeti, a panda,
and Hiroo Onoda.
A yeti, a panda,
and Hiroo Onoda.

Next is ECCE‘s performance of the revised version of my piece, “tonbo,” originally written for Santa Cruz’s New Music Works in 2006, but considerably revised and improved for this new performance.

It’s been wonderful to have a chance to revisit a piece that I wrote five years ago, especially since I’ve realized that this is probably the earliest piece of my acoustic music that I don’t simply consider a “student work.” Over these five years, though, I have learned quite a bit more about notation and orchestration, so it’s been fun working to preserve the more youthful (naive?) “voice” of the piece, while also bringing up its technical level.

“tonbo” (from the Japanese for “dragonfly”), composed after I returned from my first three years in Japan, is one of my first attempts to blend Japanese folk music into the Western concert tradition. While writing the piece, my mind was filled with the image of a dragonfly, the ubiquitous symbol of late summer in Japan, and, in the opening melody, I try to capture the quick yet uneven flight of the insect.

Finally, the improvisation based group, Loaded Dice’s, performance of my piece Everybody on the one, with scores created in collaboration with visual artist Christopher Hoover.

I’ve been interested in George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic for many years, and I was deeply impressed recently when watching a documentary about the group by the fact that they worked hard to maintain a unified art concept with their music, live stage show, and album art. I was inspired to team up with my friend, visual artist / MD Christopher Hoover to create a tribute to the group that attempts to bring to bring the music and philosophy of P-Funk into the realm of aleatoric concert music.

That said, I seem to have come to the eye of the storm, and I’m also getting some media from various recent performances, and I’m hoping to post them here over the coming weeks.

Here’s a short piece for video and stereo audio, formatted for portable devices:

This piece is the first in a series of short video pieces I’m writing constructed from images and video that I took during my time in Japan. My goal in these pieces, rather than trying to create something that is “Japanese,” is to create a kind of artistic scrapbook that explores my experiences on my travels.

Fushimi Inari Jinja (or Fushimi Inari-Taisha) is a mountain temple/shrine located in Kyoto, famous for its tunnel-like series of orange gates.