PROJECTS

MUSICAL HAIKU

Ikuko presented a programme “Musical Haiku”, comprising five works that display a link to the Japanese haiku (a short poetic form), as part of NottNoise New Music Marathon (online concerts) in November 2020. One of these five pieces included Joe Cutler’s Local Music for piano and harmonica, which was written for Ikuko in January 2020. The titles of three pieces in Local Music (I. Susie and Ian and Ian and Susie; II. January Coda Blues-Waltz; III. Bright sun, winter mornings) are “a quiet celebration of the local (moments of beauty from a cold January)”. Other works included in the programme are Haiku and Seven Haiku by John Cage, Haiku by Jonathan Harvey, and Etude III: Calligraphy, Haiku, 1 Line by Toshio Hosokawa. Watch Ikuko’s performance of this programme:

japan in the west, the west in japan

As official events of the Japanese Embassy’s cultural programme “Japan-UK Season of Culture” celebrating the 2019 Rugby World Cup and 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, Ikuko performed piano recitals entitled “Japan in the West; the West in Japan”. This concert programme showcases piano music inspired by Japanese scenery (e.g. Mount Fuji and cherry blossoms) and Japanese culture (e.g. Japanese prints and concert of ma) by Japanese, European and American composers, such as Tōru Takemitsu, Claude Debussy, Billy Mayerl, and Oliver Knussen. 

Water Metamorphosis

Celebrating anniversaries of Claude Debussy and Leoš Janáček in 2018, Ikuko created a programme entitled “Water Metamorphosis”,  a selection of piano works depicting various forms of water. Gentle waves in Venetian canals heard in Barcarolle in A flat major by Gabriel Fauré, opulent fountains splashing in Les jeux d’eaux à la villa d’Este by Franz Liszt, ocean waves in L’isle joyeuse by Claude Debussy, In the Mists by Leoš Janáček all stimulate the listener’s aural and visual imagination. Watch one of the water pieces here:

Musical time and temporality

In her PhD thesis, Ikuko studied different concepts of time and various types of musical time and temporality, and how this influences the performer’s interpretation of notated music. She performed various concert programmes which included works that are constructed upon linear time (i.e. time has a clear beginning and end) and nonlinear time (e.g. cyclic time, immeasurable time, concept of ma). One of the composers she investigated was George Crumb. His “Dream Images (Love-Death Music)” quotes Frédéric Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu, inviting the listener to experience musical time in which present and past coexists, while “Spiral Galaxy” is notated in a circular form. Watch her performance here: