xenakis et le japon in tokyo

XENAKIS

PLEIADES

UPCOMING

02/2019 KUNITACHI

08/2019 HAMURA

12/2019 AONE

02/2020 KUNITACHI

05/2020 SAGAMIKO

08/2020 KUNITACHI

10/2020 AONE

11/2020 AONE

02/2021 YOKOHAMA

02/2021 TOYOHASHI

04/2021 KUNITACHI

05/2021 SAGAMIKO

06/2021 KUNITACHI

06/2021 TOKYO

09/2021 GREECE

LIVE STREAMING

PREVIEW

2/09/2021

LIVE STREAMING from Kanagawa Art Hall, Yokohama Japan

INC. PERCUSSIONISTS

Itaru Akuhara, Rengo Azuma, Sumire Ito, Ayano Saito, Naoto Sato, Yoko Shinozaki, Karen Takaguchi, Asami Tanimoto, Karin Tozaki, Maico Tomita, Shiho Nakano, Masayuki Nino, Ryohei Fujimoto, Chihiro Furuya, Koichi Hosono, Hanako Manabe, Eriko Mikami, Kana Yokouchi.

Music Direction・Kuniko Kato

album ix

audio trailer

The audio trailer from the album IX – Iannis Xenakis by Kuniko is a courtesy of LINN Records. (LINN CKD495)

MELANGE

METAUX

CLAVIERS

PEAUX

Metaux

Peaux

Claviers

PLEIADES FOR 18

PROGRESS

BACKGROUND

In 2013, Kuniko recorded Pleiades’ 6 parts and 4 movements, a total of 24 parts, with solo overdub, and globally released IX-IANNIS XENAKIS from LINN Records. The album was acclaimed around the world with astonishment, and was selected as one of the best songs of the year by NPR in US, and was nominated for two categories at the Japan Record Academy Awards. Kuniko dared to challenge a rather difficult solo overdub to equalize the playing and instrument conditions then reproducing the color, the tone and the sound of what Xenakis intended in Pleiades. At the same time, produced the video of each part which was placed on players A to F (1 to 6) and synchronized all. As a result the structure of the music was clearly revealed.

INC.

In 2015, Kuniko launched inc. Artist Incubation Program to nurture the next generation of young performers. She made Pleiades as a permanent assignment to learn from the opening. Continued Pleiades Study Sessions at the Inc. Percussion Days in the past five years, and after over 20 study & sessions, Pleiades will be presented at the main hall of Meguro Persimmon Hall in Tokyo on August 2020 as a part of Xenakis et le Japon project.

TOKYO TOKYO FESTIVAL

In 2018, Inc. Percussion Days 2020 “Xenakis et le Japon in Tokyo” was selected as an official event of TokyoTokyoFESTIVAL. In February 2019 Inc. Percussion Days in Kunitachi Community Art Center the study sessions proceeded to an intensive rehearsal assuming the concert for 2020 season. In August 2019 Inc. Pleiades Session 1 was held at Hamura Lifelong Learning Center in Tokyo. Subsequently, a three-day Pleiades Session 2 was held at Aone Junior High School in Sagamihara City in December. In February 2020 we were returned to Kunitachi Community Art Center to continue to Pleiades Session 3. After those extensive sessions Pleiades for 18 will move on to Sagamiko in May and Kunitachi again in August then the main event at Meguro Persimmon Hall in Tokyo on August 21st, 2020.

XENAKIS 100

In 2020, after launching Xenakis et le Japon in Tokyo with Pleiades for 18, the project will expand to the world. Xenakis et le Japon received an official invitation to the Greek International Music Festival and will perform at OLYMPOLIS ART PROJECT 2021 in Greece. In 2021-22 seasons we will continue to commemorate 100th anniversary of Xenakis’ birth, the complete live version of Pleiades will be performed in Japan and around the world.

XENAKIS

Xenakis et le Japon

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Tickets

eighteen | 18

concept

A magnificent Pleiades with a total of 18 players, assigning 6 players in each instrument sections for each movements, a masterpiece of the 20th century will reborn.

“The works of Xenakis depict the intended chaos. However, live performances often hear unintended chaos, and the audience often misinterprets them as being part of his work. The Pleiades we imagine is those that include calculated chaos, which Xenakis composed, and never chaos due to human errors. It is also to clearly express his stochastic approach chaos”.

Kuniko Kato

Since launching inc. Artist Incubation in 2015, the program has conducted a total of more than 100 events, with a total of 80 projects aiming to foster the next generation of young professional performers by increasing the opportunities for young artists to perform. For the Tokyo 2020 Olympics our challenge as artists to express is to find artistic and historical values, and to re-examine them for the next generation. One of the major objectives since the inception of inc. was to always explore the 20 century’s greatest composer Ianis Xenakis, to re-examine the connection between “Xenakis and Japan” We want to demonstrate how Pleiades can be expressed on a level of modern playing skills and technology. For us as players, Xenakis is a great composer, but his artistic and cultural heritage has gone far beyond music.

Inc. Artist Incubation, which program will have the fifth anniversary in 2020, and its core subject, Pleiades for 18 is aiming for TokyoTokyoFESTIVAL. After going through inc. percussion days 2019 in Kunitachi, Pleiades Session 1 & 2 in Hamura and Aone, Session 3 in Sagamiko and Session 4 in Kunitachi we are heading for the main performance at “xenakis et le japon” in Tokyo. In order to give as many young people the opportunity of experience as possible, and to set a path to success at the same time we will invite highly influential international guests such as Thomas O’Kelly, Michael Askill, from Australia and Sharon Kanach from CIX France, who are particularly influenced and related to Iannis Xenakis.

UPIC (Unité Polyagogique Informatique CEMAMu) is a computerised musical composition tool, devised by the composer Iannis Xenakis. It was developed at the Centre d’Etudes de Mathématique et Automatique Musicales (CEMAMu) in Paris, and was completed in 1977.

Physically, the UPIC is a digitizing tablet linked to a computer, which has a vector display. Its functionality is similar to that of the later Fairlight CMI, in that the user draws waveforms and volume envelopes on the tablet, which are rendered by the computer. Once the waveforms have been stored, the user can compose with them by drawing “compositions” on the tablet, with the X-axis representing time, and the Y-axis representing pitch. The compositions can be stretched in duration from a few seconds to an hour. They can also be transposed, reversed, inverted, and subject to a number of algorithmic transformations. The system allows for real time performance by moving the stylus across the tablet.

Xenakis used it on his subsequent piece Mycènes Alpha (1978) and two other works. It has also been used by composers such as Julio Estrada, (Eua´on (1980)), Jean-Claude Risset (on Saxatile (1992)), François-Bernard Mâche (Hypérion (1981), Nocturne (1981), Tithon (1989), Moires (1994), Canopée (2003)), Takehito Shimazu (Illusions in Desolate Fields (1994)), Mari King, and Curtis Roads. Aphex Twin talked about it in an interview . Ref; Wikipedia – UPIC