Ryoko Akama: Women Make Music
New composition for Piano – Recording, Album Release and Premiere
I am honoured to receive PRSF funding to compose and record new piano works written for Philip Thomas, one of the most highly-regarded pianists working within contemporary music. Though piano is the principal instrument, there will also be accompanying instrumental parts, played by members of Apartment House, the UK’s leading experimental music ensemble with whom Philip performs frequently. The new pieces will be released on CD on the Another Timbre label, and will be premiered either at Huddersfield University, or at one of the festivals where my work has been presented previously.
The new compositions will extend the explorations of musical harmony, patterns and duration which I developed on my previous CD, ‘Dial 45-21-95’, which was released on Another Timbre in 2019 to excellent reviews, and part of which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show. The new compositions will deepen these explorations, examining both Japanese and Western contemporary music in order to further stretch my compositional boundaries.
My work has been presented nationally and internationally at venues and festivals including Yorkshire Sculpture International, HCMF, Music We’d Like To Hear, Darmstadt, Cafe OTO, Experimental Intermedia, Counterflows Festival, STEIM and GRM. I hope that my work contributes to a long-term increase in the exposure of work by women composers, as I still find a gender-imbalance.
“… moving with discreet coloration, guarded gestures and ambiguous textures, her music hangs together as a fabric of traces and implications that exert a mysterious hold….” (Julian Cowley, The Wire)
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Image by: Anton Lukoszevieze