Music to welcome moons into waves (2025) is a new ritualistic musical work for four Japanese instruments, based around mediaeval Japanese concepts of music, rhythm, perspective, and the importance of unintentional, nonhuman sounds. Performed outdoors in Lotusland’s Japanese garden from 5-6 pm (during the Japanese Hour of the Monkey), this music will be heard in dialogue with the sounds of birds, waters, insects, commuters, and winds as they ready themselves for nightfall.
This new piece will continue composer Daryl Jamieson’s recent musical collaborations between the sounds of nonhumans – sentient and non-sentient beings, phenomena, and spirits local to particular places – and western classical and Japanese instruments. Gotō (archipelago) (2023) for piano and audio-visual field recordings from the Gotō archipelago in the far west of Japan explored that area’s unique nature, its spirits, and its deep and sometimes tragic connections to Christianity and Buddhism. The Descants series, conceived in 2020 to be playable even during the restrictions of the early Covid-19 lockdowns, is a series of five pieces for solo performer in a natural environment drawing on mediaeval Japanese understandings of place and time. Similarly, Music to welcome moons into waves aims to foster and deepen the connections between each participant, each audience member and the very place and time where and when this musical ritual is performed.
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