ListN Up playlists are commissioned by American Composers Forum. Artists are selected by ACF staff (including I CARE IF YOU LISTEN and innova Recordings).
Akari Komura (b.1996) is a composer and multidisciplinary artist from Tokyo, Japan. Her works center around contemplative engagement with listening and soundmaking. She is interested in focusing attention on the intimate, impermanent, and vulnerable qualities and blurring the boundaries of individual/collective, life/art, and performer/audience. Akari is a Ph.D. composition student at the University of California San Diego.
Hi, my name is Akari Komura, and I am a composer currently based in San Diego, California. I first want to thank Natalia Merlano Gomez for nominating me and also to Amanda Cook for making this opportunity for me to curate a ListnUp playlist.
The works I included are written or performed by people that I have personal connections with and also who have influenced my compositional practice. I think they have a shared interest in being experimental and collaborative with the site and social environment of music-making.
As a composer myself, I am always interested in writing scores that are invitational and also being an initiator for an interactive space. Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy listening to my playlist!
Sound Fishes by Pauline Oliveros, Performed by University of Michigan Digital Music Ensemble
“Pull the sound out of the air like a fisherman catching a fish, sensing its size and energy.” – Pauline Oliveros
When I first encountered her Sonic Meditations, it opened my eyes to the possibility of using text as a notation and facilitating a new mode of listening. I like this particular performance of Sound Fishes with lighting and body movement incorporated into sonic activities. Digital Music Ensemble is directed by Stephen Rush whose teaching practice impacted my interactive process in collaboration.
The Infinite Detail of this Place and Time by Virago & The A.W.E. Society
This work emerges from the beautiful collaboration between Virago & The A.W.E. Society. I remember the immersive experience of being at their performance and it has inspired me to interweave a collage of natural objects and found text. I love how Bridget Quinn plays with the bounds of city/nature, body/environment in this participatory space.
“Oscillations: 100 Years and Forever” by Ellen Reid and Sarah LaBrie (librettist)
During my undergraduate years, I met Ellen as a composer-in-residence with the choir I was singing in. Working on her music introduced me to new music and influenced me to start composing. The piece also shifted my perspective of composing to connect with the architecture and build a sense of place through a site-specific engagement.
grow|thaw by J. Clay Gonzalez and Nadine Dyskant-Miller, Performed by the Regenerate! Orchestra
As a composer, performer, and orchestra director, I am a huge fan of Clay Gonzalez’s community-oriented approach to music-making. His way of making a concert is rooted in site-specificity, participatory engagement, intermedia, and natural soundscape. I deeply resonated with the idea of blurring the audience/performer roles and facilitating an inviting performance space. Listening to grow|thaw evokes sculptural and meditative essence as viewers of an acoustic installation.
birdcage (ghost score) by Alex Mah, Performed by Mah and Ilana Waniuk
birdcage is a multi-media performance, composed by Alex Mah, that reflects on family, migration, and memory through written text (scores and poetry), lanterns, voice, and music. I am inspired by how the work is available as a publication for viewers to engage intimately with the score and poem. The performance is beautifully rendered by Ilana Waniuk who crafts time and space with sound/silence and movement/stillness.
Postcards II: Akari by Leilahua Lanzilotti, Performed by Lanzilotti, Alice Teyssier, and Ashley Jackson
As a composer and curator, I love how Anne Leilahua Lanzilotti fabricates sites into sound in her collaborative site-specific works. Listening to this piece draws my ears to the fragile and wavering qualities of the Akari lantern sculptures in the Noguchi Museum. “Akari” means ‘light’ in Japanese with implications of warmth and softness in radiance. (I also find a personal connection since it coincides with my name!)
Sonic Habitat #68 by Akari Komura, Performed by Duo Lingua
This track is from a newly released album that includes works written by my dear friends in collaboration with Duo Lingua (David Aguila & Natalia Merlano Gómez) and Bogotana Records. The piece is an interpretation of my text composition from an ongoing score project, Sonic Habitat. Using text, images, and videos, I’ve been exploring to create instructional event scores that invite readers to be interpretive performers. I am interested in reframing a perceptual experience from everyday life into the context of musical improvisation.
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