New Year 2008

Hello music-lovers,

I have been writing about last year's music activities in the Hokuriku Area, which includes three prefectures: Fukui, Ishikawa, and Toyama, the last being my hometown.

For Fukui, I am focusing on the tenth anniversary of the Harmony Hall Fukui, a beautiful concert hall with a gorgeous organ. The hall presented a new piece commissioned by the Fukui Arts Foundation: an opera titled Ondine. The opera was written in the style of French impressionism. Yes, the subject matter of the opera is European and not the local story of this area, but the opera itself was sung in Japanese.

The anniversary concert also included the second performance of recently-composedFukui Sanka (Anthem for Fukui). Fukui Sanka is, I'll say, a secular anthem, featuring the organ in the hall and Japanese traditional taiko drumming with chorus and orchestra. The local musicians gave monumental performances of both pieces.

I also will write about the Takefu International Music Festival. The music director of the festival is Toshio Hosokawa, a well-known Japanese composer. Although the festival presented pieces by J. S. Bach, Mozart, Dvorak and other "standard repertoire" composers, its main purpose is to give living composers an arena to present their new compositions. That is why the Composers' Workshops are part of the festival. I will write about new music presented in this festival. Composers presented in the festival, among others, were Akira Nishimura, Misato Mochizuki, Tetsuji Emura, Masamichi Kinoshita, and of course, Toshio Hosokawa.

For Ishikawa, I deal with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa (OEK), the only professional orchestra in the Hokuriku Area. The orchestra welcomed a new music director Michiyoshi Inoue. On 25 February 2007, OEK with the conductor Inoue performed Maki Ishii's piece, featuring the Japanese traditional court music, gagaku, and the Buddhist chants, shomyo. The audience was given a bottle of sake. Isn't that wonderful. I wish I were there (well... for music, not the sake ;-)

For Toyama, I would like to write about the music festival commemorating the legacy of the great violinist Szymon Goldberg. The festival is actually called Szymon Goldberg Memorial.

The Memorial consisted of seminars for young musicians, outreach activities for local schools, and a few public concerts. The public concerts were all free.

Well..I'll go back to the work. If I have more time, I might report more about these events.

Bye.