For her Composer Portrait at Miller Theatre on March 6, Miya Masaoka presented a substantial, cohesive, and emotive demonstration of how she has mastered illusory chaos. Performed by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) musicians, the program’s first three pieces zoomed in on a particular constellation of ideas and techniques and built to the final world premiere which presented a mature, compelling, and humorous synthesis of Masaoka’s earlier works.
The music started with a sine tone. Reflecting on the transition out of pandemic isolation, Mapping a Joyful Path (2023) features solo amplified violin interacting with electronics to find some kind of duet conversation. Along the way, Masaoka creates a spectacular catalogue of every possible violin sound and technique. Brought to life by violinist Modney, Masoka’s writing demanded that he animate the violin’s erratic, charming, and occasionally awkward search for connection so fantastically that the drone’s immutability became suspect. How can something remain so static? What happens when the unpredictable thing takes over?
Artistic disciplines are irrelevant to Masaoka, and she draws comparisons between her work and the sciences. Her work comes from “why?” questions, and her career spans not only concert works but interactive, immersive installations that change with and respond to audience engagement. In addition to directing Columbia’s Sound Art MFA program, Masaoka is Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Visual Arts at Columbia University: she is looking for different manifestations of inquiry.
Modney — Photo by Rob Davidson for Miller Theatre at Columbia University
The Dust and the Noise (2013, rev. 2022) for piano, percussion, violin, and cello is a brilliant abstraction of cocktail party chaos. It is full of loops that never close, ideas that never fully materialize, and busy daydreams that evaporate: maracas shaking underneath a high violin pitch, stuttering cello, piano chords that stomp through the bass without real anger, crotales and high-register piano twinkles, and brief rumbling timpani – all interesting blurbs of cheese-and-cracker drama that neither offend nor satisfy.
Because Masaoka’s installation work explores bodily perception of vibration, movement, and time, her Portrait featured string quartet writing as an appropriate form for static proscenium seating. Inspired by Italian Renaissance painting perspectives during her Rome Prize winner residency, Masaoka converted the electronic elements of her first The Horizon Leans Forward into a string quartet examination of texture and space. Dramatic, short, and almost fugal upbows strike, shimmer, and disappear; the wispy string writing from The Dust and the Noise appears alongside more resonant, robust plucking and shifts between polyphonic and isolated writing.
In her live conversation with Miller Theatre Executive Director Melissa Smey, Masaoka mentioned several times how jarring and strange it is to have her solitary compositional endeavors become suddenly public. Although she enjoys her work and loves the moments of collaboration with performers, she insisted with frankness and humor that composing provides “no endorphins… not for me.” Composing can be an excruciating leap into nothingness; making the work public is terrifying. But “a project isn’t worth doing unless I really feel like there is something for me to learn … to add something to the world that wasn’t there before,” she says.
Conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni — Photo by Rob Davidson for Miller Theatre at Columbia University
The culminating Miller Theatre commission, Into the Landscape of the Shaking Inner Chôra (2024/5), encapsulates what Masaoka developed through the prior inquiries and indeed adds something new to the world. Inspired by ancient and modern philosophers Plato and Julia Kristeva, Masaoka set out to recreate and capture the essential state of being and desire before a child has learned shame. A humorous prelude — in which ICE performers sat on the floor and used vibrating sex toys against boxes, acrylic materials, and metal bowls — set a tone of chaotic experimentation. Under Vimbayi Kaziboni’s baton, the ensemble piece succeeded in maintaining this mood despite demanding rhythms and playfully disorganized textures. Each musician had plastic bags and a large sheet of paper to rip and crinkle throughout the piece, capturing bygone sounds of kindergarten creativity.
Throughout the evening, moments of tonality had an accidental quality: Mapping a Joyful Path created some drone polyphony between electronics and violinist, and other pieces had bits of traditional string quartet sound. Yet the program of fragmentary, exposed writing cohered into solid and effective statements through Masaoka’s compositional prowess. Music is “really a way of communication — on a very primal level,” she tells Tim Munro in the program notes. “With each work I am trying to get to a kernel of truth.” It is a bold ambition to find the contours of truth in wisps and shadows. But Masaoka succeeds.
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