Contact: John Stulz 614/560-9756 [email protected] for immediate release:
DAI FUJIKURA: WORKS FOR VIOLA(S)
Anne Lanzilotti + John Stulz, violas Sunday October 6, 2013 | 7pm | Firehouse Space | 246 Frost Street Brooklyn, NY 11211
“Exceptionally striking pieces, combining mastery of texture and form with a marvellous sense of compositional pacing and gesture. ★★★★★” -BBC Music Magazine “High octane instrumental writing” -The Guardian
DAI FUJIKURA: WORKS FOR VIOLA(S)
Anne Lanzilotti + John Stulz, violas
FLUX for solo viola PRISM SPECTRA for viola and electronics DOLPHINS for two violas SAMARASA for solo viola FLUID CALLIGRAPHY for viola and video projections by Tomoya Yamaguchi
Ticket $10 http://thefirehousespace.org/
Brooklyn, NY - DATE - On October 6th, violists Anne Lanzilotti and John Stulz perform the
*DAI FUJIKURA: WORKS FOR VIOLA(S) press release* complete works for viola(s) by highly acclaimed British/Japanese composer Dai Fujikura at The Firehouse Space in Brooklyn. Featuring works for one and two violas, viola and electronics, as well as a collaboration for viola and video with the japanese artist Tomoya Yamaguchi, this unique event will present a comprehensive portrait of one of the leading young composers currently working in Europe.
DAI FUJIKURA: WORKS FOR VIOLA(S) will show Fujikura’s highly skilled and wildly unique sonic language within the intimate yet variegated medium of the viola. The composer’s slowly morphing harmonies and ear opening acoustic effects are in full force with FLUX and SAMARASA for solo viola, the latter of which will be given its world premiere here in the viola version. DOLPHINS, a duet written for violists Nobuko Imai and Kim Kashkashian, takes this language into dream-like worlds with memories of Messaien and Takemitsu.
The highlight of the evening will be Fujikura’s collaborations with IRCAM (Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustic/Musique, Paris) and the Japanese video-artist Tomoya Yamaguchi. FLUID CALLIGRAPHY pairs musical and visual lines inspired by Japanese calligraphy, with stunning video images from Mr. Yamaguchi. PRISM SPECTRA, one of Fujikura’s most acclaimed works, expands the sonic expectations of the viola through extensive live electronic processing and effects designed specifically for the piece by engineers at IRCAM.
DAI FUJIKURA: WORKS FOR VIOLA(S) takes a vital step in expanding awareness of Fujikura’s important work among audiences in the United States and promises to be an exciting early-season event for anyone interested in recent developments in contemporary music.
ABOUT DAI FUJIKURA
Although Dai Fujikura was born in Osaka, he has now spent more than 20 years in the UK where he studied composition with Edwin Roxburgh, Daryl Runswick and George Benjamin. During the last decade he has been the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Huddersfield Festival Young Composers Award and a Royal Philharmonic Society Award in UK, Internationaler Wiener Composition Prize, the Paul Hindemith Prize in Austria and Germany respectively and both the OTAKA and Akutagawa awards in 2009.
A quick glance at his list of commissions and performances reveals he is fast becoming a truly international composer. His music is not only performed in the country of his birth or his adopted home, but is now performed in venues as geographically diverse as Caracas and Oslo, Venice and Schleswig-Holstein, Lucerne and Paris.
In his native Japan he has been accorded the special honour of a portrait concert in Suntory Hall in October 2012. In London where he chooses to live with his wife and family, he has now received two BBC Proms commissions, his Double Bass Concerto was recently premiered by
*DAI FUJIKURA: WORKS FOR VIOLA(S) press release* the London Sinfonietta and in 2013 the BBC Symphony Orchestra will give the UK premiere of ‘Atom’ as part of the Total Immersion: Sounds from Japan.
Conductors with whom he has worked include Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Jonathan Nott, Gustavo Dudamel, the newly-appointed conductor of the Suisse Romande, Kazuki Yamada and Alexander Liebreich. His compositions are increasingly the product of international co-commissions. In 2012/13 the Seattle and Bamberg Symphony will each give continental premieres of ‘Mina’ for wind a percussion soloists and orchestra and the Asian premiere is currently being negotiated. In 2011/12 the Arditti Quartet performed ‘flare’ in collaborating venues in London, Edinburgh and Tokyo. His opera, which is based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel, Solaris, will be co-produced in both France and Switzerland.
In 2012 NMC released the first disc devoted exclusively to his music, “secret forest”, and in summer 2013, another album of his works is planned to be released on the KAIROS label, performed by I.C.E.
MUSICIANS
A fierce advocate of contemporary music, ANNE LANZILOTTI has premiered solo and chamber music works across Europe and the United States. In the summer of 2011, she gave the UK premiere of Dai Fujikura’s “prism spectra” for viola and electronics at Village Underground in London. Lanzilotti has performed with new music ensembles such as Alarm Will Sound, ensemble interface, and Soloistenensemble Kaleidoskop, as well as with computer music engineers from IRCAM Paris on works involving live electronics.
A Brooklyn-based performer, she collaborates frequently with members of Sleeping Giant. Lanzilotti has worked with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Simon Rattle, and Michael Tilson Thomas as an orchestral musician. During her Fellowship at the New World Symphony, she was co-Principal. Lanzilotti performed with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin for two years as a Fellowship Violist. She is the Associate Principal Violist of the Wintergreen Performing Arts Festival Orchestra.
As a Teaching Artist, Lanzilotti has given master classes at Oberlin Conservatory and Bowling Green University. Abroad, Lanzilotti has given master classes and taught at the Campamento Juvenil of the Asociacion National de Conciertos, and as a member of the Camerata of the Americas in Panama City and El Valle, Panama. She was a guest Teaching Artist at Al Kamanjati Music School in Ramallah, West Bank. Lanzilotti is a Chamber Music Coach and Viola
*DAI FUJIKURA: WORKS FOR VIOLA(S) press release* Faculty at Wintergreen Performing Arts Academy in Virginia. She has a small private studio in New York City.
Lanzilotti began her string studies with Hiroko Primrose in Hawai’i. She studied with Peter Slowik at Oberlin Conservatory (BM ’05), and with Jesse Levine at the Yale School of Music (MM ’08) and was awarded an Alumni Prize in her final year. While living in Berlin, she worked with Wilfried Strehle (SoloViola, Berlin Philharmonic). She is currently pursuing doctorate at Manhattan School of Music under Karen Ritscher.
Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, violist JOHN STULZ has gone on to live and study in Los Angeles, Boston and New York City. His artistic mentors include Donald McInnes, Kim Kashkashian, Garth Knox, and Midori.
John’s major performances include Berio’s daunting Chemins II with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, praised by the Boston Globe for his “taut control and poetic intensity”; West Coast premieres of works by Donald Crockett, Elliott Carter, and Krzysztof Meyer; as well as chamber music performances with Arnold Steinhardt, Joseph Silverstein, Miriam Fried, and Steven Mackey.
As a musical entrepreneur, John partnered with conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni in 2008 to found the Los Angeles–based What’s Next? Ensemble. The group has since brought together more than 100 young musicians to perform the music of over 50 local composers under the auspices of their annual Los Angeles Composers Project, now in its fifth year.
When not playing the work of others, John is active creating original projects that seek to expand the traditional musical practice. Among these projects are a series of algorithmic recompositions of a piece by György Ligeti, an ongoing collection of musical "Diaries", a project with elementary school children to create visual art inspired by avant-garde composers, and a current project to over-compose field recordings of the 186 blocks from John's apartment to the southern tip of Manhattan. In March John self-released his first album of compositions, December Steps. For more information on his composition projects visit www.johnstulz.com.
John is currently a member of the Academy, a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. As part of his Academy program, John teaches in Queens at PS 877 The 51 Avenue Academy and performs around New York as a member of Ensemble ACJW.
*DAI FUJIKURA: WORKS FOR VIOLA(S) press release* TOMOYA YAMAGUCHI was born in 1958. He studied and taught in Japan before moving to London in the early 1990’s.
He has exhibited widely both in the UK and Japan, including the Lisson Gallery, London and East International, Norwich. His work was part of the 2001 Japan Festival in London.
Most recently he has moved into video art, in collaboration with composer Dai Fujikura, staging an extremely succesful show, including paintings, sculpture and video, as part of the International Contemporary Music Festival in Huddersfield 2003. He had one man show highly succesful in Howard Gardens gallery in Cardiff 2005.
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*DAI FUJIKURA: WORKS FOR VIOLA(S) press release*