Japanese avant-garde pioneer composer Ichiyanagi dies at 89
Avant-garde pianist and composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, who studied with John Cage and went on to guide Japan’s advances in experimental fashionable music, has died. He was 89.
Ichiyanagi, who was married to Yoko Ono earlier than she married John Lennon, died Friday, based on the Kanagawa Arts Basis, the place Ichiyanagi had served as normal creative director. The reason for loss of life was not given.
“We want to categorical our sincerest gratitude to all those that cherished him throughout his lifetime,” the muse’s chairman, Kazumi Tamamura, stated in an announcement Saturday.
Ichiyanagi studied at The Juilliard College in New York and emerged a pioneer, utilizing free-spirited compositional methods that left a lot to likelihood, incorporating not solely conventional Japanese components and devices but additionally digital music.
He was recognized for collaborations that defied the boundaries of genres, working with Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham, in addition to progressive Japanese artists like architect Kisho Kurokawa and poet-playwright Shuji Terayama, in addition to with Ono, with whom he was married for a number of years beginning within the mid-Fifties.
“In my creation, I’ve been attempting to let varied components, which have usually been thought of individually as distinction and reverse in music, coexist and penetrate one another,” Ichiyanagi as soon as stated in an artist assertion.
Japanese conventional music impressed and emboldened him, he stated, as a result of it was not preoccupied with the same old definitions of music as “temporal artwork,” or what he referred to as “divisions,” resembling relative and absolute, or new and outdated.
Trendy music was extra about “substantial area, with the intention to restore the non secular richness that music offers,” he stated.
Amongst his well-known works for orchestra is his turbulently provocative “Berlin Renshi.” Renshi is a type of Japanese collaborative poetry that’s extra open-ended free verse than older kinds like “renku.”
In 1989, Ichiyanagi shaped the Tokyo Worldwide Music Ensemble — The New Custom (TIME), an orchestral group targeted on conventional devices and “shomyo,” a method of Buddhist chanting.
His music traveled freely throughout influences and cultures, transitioning seamlessly from minimalist avant-garde to Western opera.
Ichiyanagi toured world wide, premiering his compositions at Carnegie Corridor in New York and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris. The Nationwide Theater of Japan additionally commissioned him for a number of works.
He remained prolific over time, producing Concerto for marimba and orchestra in 2013, and Piano Concerto No. 6 in 2016, which Ichiyanagi carried out solo at a Tokyo pageant.
Ichiyanagi acquired quite a few awards, together with the Alexander Gretchaninov Prize from Juilliard, L’ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic and the Order of the Rising Solar, Gold Rays with Rosette and the Medal of Purple Ribbon from the Japanese authorities.
Born in Kobe to a musical household, Ichiyanagi confirmed promise as a composer at a younger age. He gained a significant competitors in Japan earlier than transferring to the U.S. as a teen, when such strikes had been nonetheless comparatively uncommon in postwar Japan.
A non-public funeral is being held with household. A public ceremony in his honor is within the works, being organized by his son, Japanese media experiences stated.
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