Composer fuses tradition, tech
Japanese musician’s musical language has won awards, grant
The works of composer Somei Satoh are known throughout Japan but not widely recognized in the United States. Satoh, who was born in Sendai, Japan, in 1947, has created a musical language that fuses traditional Japanese sensibilities with 19th-century classical romanticism and electronic technology.
In 1980 he was awarded the Japan Arts Festival prize. Three years later he received a grant that allowed him to spend one year living and working in the United States. Five years after Satoh returned to Japan the Americanbased Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio commissioned him to write the piece “Gate Into Infinity” for them. To date, it is the only group to have recorded it.
“When I listen to the piece, I think of the grand vistas in New Mexico and the subtle changes in the sky,” said pianist Debra Ayers, who plays “Gate Into Infinity” with percussionist Jeff Sussmann and violinist Guillermo Figueroa during Serenata of Santa Fe’s concert on May 5.
“It’s quite an ethereal piece that starts with the violin playing long sustained notes. Satoh gradually fills the space with more notes and more volume. Even when it gets loud, it’s not very loud. Then at the end the music almost gets back to an absence of sound. In this work, silence is the same thing as space.”
Serenata of Santa Fe’s “Gate Into Infinity” concert highlights Satoh’s 1988 work as well as pieces by Robert Schumann and Heitor Villa-Lobos.
“What Schumann’s Three Romances for Oboe & Piano and Villa-Lobos’ Piano Trio in C Minor have in common with Satoh’s ‘Gate Into Infinity’ is that they feel like heartfelt, personal statements by their respective composers,” said Ayers.
Ayers plays Schumann’s Three Romances with oboist Pamela Epple, the artistic director of Serenata of Santa Fe. Epple, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, freelanced with the American Composer’s Orchestra, P.D.Q. Bach and the Paul Taylor Dance Company Orchestra while she lived in New York and toured in the United States and abroad with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Joining Ayers for VillaLobos’ Piano Trio in C Minor are Figueroa, who is artistic director of the Abuquerque-based Figueroa Art and Music Project, and cellist Sally Guenther, who was a solo cellist with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Norway for 20 years.