iChamber to premier commissioned work by award-winning electroacoustic composer at dance concert
TEMPE, Ariz.--Live performances on violin, cello, flute and piano will enforce and unify computer generated sounds of fire, rain, wind, voice and acoustic instruments when iChamber premiers international award-winning composer Hideko Kawamoto’s Burning for Center Dance Ensembles’Dreamcatchers concert. The concert will be performed March 7-10 at the Herberger Theatre Center Stage West.
Burning, an electroacoustic composition, was commissioned by the Institute for Studies in the Arts at ASU’s Herberger College of Fine Arts for iChamber, its innovative concert music program dedicated to the creation, promotion and performance of new music for mixed chamber ensemble. Kawamoto worked in collaboration with choreographers Cliff Keuter and Elina Mooney, both faculty members at the Herberger College Department of Dance, to create the work.
Kawamoto was chosen for the commission because of her internationally recognized skills as a digital composer and her experience with multimedia production, electronic audio design and processing, according to iChamber director and music professor JB Smith.
With Burning, Kawamoto brings together two divergent sets of emotions just as she fuses electronic and acoustic sounds. The composer says imagery for the work was inspired by two poems whose authors are unknown and whose themes sharply contrast. “In Western Wind, I felt a desperate desire and longing for unrequited love, a tragic separation,” Kawamoto says. “But in Lak, I felt a positive statement of one’s existence in a timeless frame.”
Born in Japan, Kawamoto began studying piano at age nine. She is an active composer of both acoustic and electroacoustic music and most recently was awarded the Luigi Russolo first prize at the Concorso Internazionale (Italy). Other international awards include the Bourges International Competition (France), Ear 01 International Competition (Hungary) and the Pierre Schaeffer International Computer Music Competition (Italy). Kawamoto has studied with Phil Winsor, Joseph Banowetz and Steven Harlos. She is currently chair of the music department at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in North Carolina.
Performances of Burning will be held March 7, 8 and 9 at 8 p.m. and March 10 at 2 p.m. Tickets ($18/adults, $15/seniors, $7/ children) are available through the Herberger Theatre, 602-252-8497, or Ticketmaster, 480-784-4444.
iChamber players for Burning are Herberger College School of Music graduate students Jonathan Moser (violin), Nathanael Jasinski (cello), Katayoon Hodjati (flute), and master’s alumna Meg Ruby (piano). Professor Smith conducts.
The Institute for Studies in the Arts is an interdisciplinary research center in The Katherine K. Herberger College of Fine Arts at Arizona State University. The ISA provides an environment that supports research and collaboration among artists, scholars and technologists. The goal is to invent and share new forms of art experience and processes for creating and teaching the arts. For more on the ISA, visithttp://isa.asu.edu.
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