Avant-garde pianist and composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, who studied with John Cage and went on to steer Japan’s advances in experimental fashionable music, has died. He was 89.
Ichiyanagi, who was married to Yoko Ono earlier than she married John Lennon, died Friday, in keeping with the Kanagawa Arts Foundation, the place Ichiyanagi had served as common inventive director. The reason behind demise was not given.
“We want to categorical our sincerest gratitude to all those that beloved him throughout his lifetime,” the inspiration’s chairman, Kazumi Tamamura, mentioned in an announcement Saturday.
Ichiyanagi studied at The Juilliard School in New York and emerged a pioneer, utilizing free-spirited compositional methods that left a lot to probability, incorporating not solely conventional Japanese parts and devices but in addition digital music.
He was recognized for collaborations that defied the boundaries of genres, working with Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham, in addition to revolutionary Japanese artists like architect Kisho Kurokawa and poet-playwright Shuji Terayama, in addition to with Ono, with whom he was married for a number of years beginning within the mid-Fifties.
“In my creation, I’ve been attempting to let varied parts, which have usually been thought of individually as distinction and reverse in music, coexist and penetrate one another,” Ichiyanagi as soon as mentioned in an artist assertion.
Japanese conventional music impressed and emboldened him, he mentioned, as a result of it was not preoccupied with the same old definitions of music as “temporal artwork,” or what he known as “divisions,” corresponding to relative and absolute, or new and previous.
Modern music was extra about “substantial house, as a way to restore the religious richness that music gives,” he mentioned.
Among his well-known works for orchestra is his turbulently provocative Berlin Renshi. Renshi is a type of Japanese collaborative poetry that’s extra open-ended free verse than older varieties like “renku.”
In 1989, Ichiyanagi shaped the Tokyo International Music Ensemble – The New Tradition (TIME), an orchestral group targeted on conventional devices and “shomyo,” a mode of Buddhist chanting.
His music traveled freely throughout influences and cultures, transitioning seamlessly from minimalist avant-garde to Western opera.
Ichiyanagi toured around the globe, premiering his compositions at Carnegie Hall in New York and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris. The National Theater of Japan additionally commissioned him for a number of works.
He remained prolific over time, producing Concerto for marimba and orchestra in 2013, and Piano Concerto (*89*). 6 in 2016, which Ichiyanagi carried out solo at a Tokyo pageant.
Ichiyanagi obtained quite a few awards, together with the Alexander Gretchaninov Prize from Juilliard, L’ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette and the Medal of Purple Ribbon from the Japanese authorities.
Born in Kobe to a musical household, Ichiyanagi confirmed promise as a composer at a younger age. He gained a significant competitors in Japan earlier than shifting to the U.S. as a teen, when such strikes have been nonetheless comparatively uncommon in postwar Japan.
A personal funeral is being held with household. A public ceremony in his honor is within the works, being organized by his son, Japanese media studies mentioned. – AP
