Underneath

I don't take any class on Thursday, so I stayed at home and working for the arrangement of "O Holy Night". I had also to arrange my trip to Rome today. I ordered my flight ticket and hotel for the first night through the internet.
Although I checked Euroline as well as plane, it's much more expensive than take a plane.

As we planed yesterday, Ryoya came to Den Haag in the evening. After having a dinner, we went to the performance of NDT1. They had three pieces, choreographed by Kyrian, Van Manan and young Walerski tonight.
Ryoya seems to have a lucky, today's performance had a live orchestra accompany by Holland Symphony as well.

Kyrian and Van Manan's piece was old one premiered in 90's. I liked "Underneath" by Medhi Walerski better than those masters'. They showed dynamic movements in front of the big wall having a dominating presence. And a screened video in the latter half which shows swimming dancers in the water was beautiful and impressive. I thought that it represents a fleeing from oppression or something.

"PetiteMort" Netherlands Dans Theater
Lucent Danstheater

Act or Natural?

I went to Amsterdam to see the dance performance "Borrowed Landscape" choreographed by Anouk van Dijk
at Frascati.
In this theater, I met Ryoya, Japanese stage designer by chance.
He spoke to me at the foyer when I was waiting for the performance because he thought I must be a Japanese.
This type of things happens often since I came to Europe.
As soon as we talk, we found ourselves as kindred spirits.

The performance was too long to enjoy.
However, Ryota and I both found that one moment was very interesting.
That was almost the end, performers released the tension and the lighting turned back to normal.
We felt a bit of confusion about whether the show ended up or not.
That's when one of the audience went away stealthily.
Anyway it turned out it was just the middle of piece,
but the movement of that figure skipped out was looked so special for us.
It was the perfect realistic situation, so to say.
Maybe it happened by pure chance. Still, it tickled my heart.

We made an appointment to meet again in Den Haag tomorrow.

"Borrowed Landscape" Frascati
http://www.nestheaters.nl/home/agenda/productie?voorstelling=20081-050

Fund Raise

I spent the whole afternoon to get money to go De Musica 2008.

Jeremiah and I are going to take the electronics music course in Rome.
Yesterday our teacher told us that the composition department has
budget only for the master student not for us.
And he suggested us get in touch with Wouter Turkenburg, head of the Jazz department
who is in charge of school fund.

Thus J and I visited his office at noon.Unfortunately, he wasn't there that time.
We tried again later. We met him finally, and he told us that the student fund would fit for us.
Then we called to Italy, visited to the administration, made a document for the application.
Thanks to the J's aggressiveness, everything went well so far.

Book Shelf

In the evening, I dropped by the Erik's house to buy his book shelf at second-hand. He is going to move soon, so he put it on sale for colleagues. And I'm intrested in it.
I felt that this book shelf was good size with my room and looks good, so I took it.
Good thing is we are living very close, my place is just a few-minute walk. He helped me to bring this to my place.

Busy Monday

I'm doing an arrangement of "O Holy Night" commissioned by Miwako. It will be performed in a charity concert next month by the flute, piano and strings trio. Although I brought it to the lesson with Yannis, we mainly discussed about the project of Ensemble Royal.

Lately, I bought the book,"Acting Out" by Bernard Stiegler. I'm looking a text for the piece since this ensemble including one mezzo soprano. And his quotes would be the one. I will make this in a passacaglia form.

Johan lectured on "poly~" patch. He showed us how to make a kind of vocoder with Max/MSP. Then he made a Phase modulation synthesise as typified by Yamaha DX7. This was very useful information for me.

In the Studium General, Vocal project was the first topic. Singer wants to sing rather than speak. Good relationship with player brings about success to your piece. After this, Robert had a presentation on his piece for solo violin. Although he's using proportional notation in this piece, due to the changing tempo even within one second, it is very difficult to perform truthfully. It was an interesting discussion. Maybe I should add that the performance recorded was very good.

Snowing

The hail changed to snow.

I was seeing snow scape through the window in a daze for a few seconds.

I didn't want to go out, though, the refrigerator was empty.

So I went to shopping to buy something to eat.

That was the only time I go out this weekend.

Hail

Hail to you! I have not written a blog for a while.

When I made a skype call to Japan it was still cloudy. Yesterday's forecast said it was going to rain, but it started to hail after I finish the call. Although It's not cold inside the room thanks to the central heating system, it's getting really cold outside. I didn't go out today in order to take care not to catch a cold.

I have reviewed Paul Berg's lesson at home. "1/f noise" in music was the topic. Mandelbrot, Richard Voss and John Clarke were on our summary. Paul showed us some example based on the stochastic algorithm with AC Toolbox, which was realisations of the method of Charles Dodge or Xenakis.

the First Studium

We had the first Studium General tonight.

Everyone in the Vareszall introduced him/herself with only few words. As far as I remember, we didn't have a such introduction last year. That was almost only name and nationality of each person. But this kind of initiations works indeed.

To my joy, we have a two new Japanese composers in our department this year. Another two Japanese in Sonology as well as many other players. It seems like it's going to be exciting.

Dinner with myself

Attended Pieter Paborn's DSP (Digital Signal Processing). He explained about a fundamental of FFT. I talked to one student in class after it over. We had a lunch together in Cantine.

When I got home, my room mate was in the kitchen with a lady. He introduced me to his sister. They were cooking mussels for a dinner. It reminded me of my sister and family. It's really nice to live close with your family. Although I spend a lot of time with my family this summer, I miss eating dinner with my family today.

New season has started

Today I had a Yannis's lesson for the first time. From this year, my teachers are Gilius van Bergeijk and Yannis Kyriakides. We talked about my agenda for this study year. It seems like that my second year in the Holland will become a quite busy days.

In the Johan's class, we heard the piece, "SOLO" by Stockhausen. Johan showed the big switch which he used once when he had performed this piece as an assistant. It was such a big like a printer, and has two wooden lever. The piece is written for any melodic solo instrument with looped tape. Although the recording we heard was different from the original, edited by both Globokar after he performed and Stockhausen himself, I enjoyed the music.

In the afternoon, I met Aspasia, composer at Central station. She told me some useful information for our project
as well as things had happened since we met last time. After having a meal, I went to the concert at STEIM in A'dam. It was the opening concert of DNK.

Drunken Step

Arrived at Nagoya in the afternoon. As soon as I went back to home and put my baggage, I went to the dance workshop by Mr.Tsujimoto at AAC.

The things was based on the technique for the street dance and how-to move the body. Release the body from muscular tension. Open mind. Do "Drunken Step" as a fundamentals in posture. Weakness in the muscles generates freely movement. After got home, I talked with my mother into the night.

Leave for Japan

Theo drove me up to Schipol with Naho.
As soon as we said good bye,
my plane had left for Japan.

Arrangement

Had a last lesson with Gilius today. I brought my arrangement of Gershwin. He asked me why I limited a possibilities.
It is very close to the original, indeed. However, that is the order from the client.

I think arrangement is in some way similar to advertising design. Customer satisfaction is given priority over personal expression.

Management

I had a meeting with Rob at KonCon to proposal my project. We discussed a possibility to congress my idea. After that, I went to Cornelis's house to get his recommendation letter for my subsidy. I hope everything goes well.

In the evening, I went to the Y&A's party. We had a nice conversation eating sushi.

Hoi Delft

We got together at Den Haag HS in the morning and went to Delft. S was waiting us at the station. She's studying cultural economics in there. Mr. Motoyama introduced me to her last week when we had a dinner in the Hague.

We went to Oudekerk (Old Church), Workshop of Delftware and Delft University of Technology. I was very excited because the design of university was so cool. Afterwards S and I walked up a stairway to the top of Nieuwekerk.
It was a really great view.

Friend coming over

Busy day, today. Walked to the central station passed 5 o'clock in the early morning to pick up Yuki. She is now traveling in Europe, and will stay here until Thursday.

After she left for Utrecht, I went to the school to listen the exams of Mariko and Misaki. And I had a lesson with Cornelis in the afternoon. It goes without saying that I was doing arrangement for Momoko in spare moments from those things.

Y, M, S and I went to Korean restaurant in the evening. There were only us. It's only a matter of time before they go out of business.

Refill ink tank

The ink tank got empty, so I refilled it.

The way of refilling was different from the Japanese which I was used to. Putting the new ink on the bottom of ink tank. However it was OK until refill, I can't print for some reasons. The bad things is that my printer doesn't recognize the tank even though I put it back. I wanna print my music and document. Got me stumped.

I wonder if I should buy a new tank. Hmm.

STOP Child Labor

On the way to the shopping I find a sign in front of the Grotekerk by chance, and dropped in. I met Peter, a photographer who having a exhibition in there.

He's working for the social activity to stop Children Labor and showing pictures of working children on panels. Meanwhile, he had been taking a picture of visitors showing their palm forward which means "stop" in answer to his request. His book will also be published soon. This exhibition will be continue until July 6th at the Grotekerk, Den Haag.

How to enjoy

Codarts, Dance school in Rotterdam is going on a tour. They have a performance in Den Haag tonight and tomorrow.
I heard that my friends will also perform, so I went to the Korzo Theater to see it.

The former of the program was choreographed by students and the later was by teachers. However it wasn't as good as I thought, I paid attention to the motion of the body and constructions so that I could enjoy it.
I believe it is worth to think why I feel it isn't good.

Clean Up Campaign

I asked K to help me to make a DVD for my master exam.
We edited the video of performance "Another Time" into 5 min digest version.

Lately, my neighbors make a mess which I really hate.
We have a common terrace in our place.
It's an open space for everyone who living this building, but we have to keep there clean.

I made the text "THANKS" with littering cigarette butts and bottle crown cap as warning.
They should clean it up themselves. I hope it makes a difference.

Anne's house

Aunt Keiko and her friend are visiting to the Netherlands. They arrived at Amsterdam station in this noon from Belgium where they had stayed until yesterday. After checked in, we went out for a lunch.

Rijksmuseum, Anne Frank House...
I talked to them how's the life in here going on Canal Bus travel.

It was the first time to visit Anne's house for me, though I have been to A'dam many times before. I was surprised at the design of the building. It was exactly where Anne family used to keep themselves hidden from Nazi Germany, however, was not an ordinary memorial house which just preserving. The entrance has modern style with glass.
And exhibition is designed to allow guests to understand well from a multilateral standpoint in such a way that using video and photos.

Letters from the Anne's diary are painted on the walls. Walking up the stair and taking a house tour, we could follow her feeling with her three year diary. The exhibition ends up with the death of Anne at the highest room.

Naming game

I'm busy with the arrangement for Momoko.
She asked me to make a transcription of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess"
for clarinet, violin and piano.

In the late evening, I went to Eiji's house to celebrate his birthday.
M, Y, S and me were in the party.
We had spent an evening enjoying games that familiar to us.

Best game for me was a Naming game.
In this game you have to describe imaginary products with its name invented by haphazard.
We laughed and laughed at strange stories.

Head of Bush

Today went to Studhuis (City Hall) to report the change of my address.
Yes, I know. I moved in April. Finally, I gave notice to them.
I had to wait more than two hours to get a certification as known as GBA
which you need to apply for an extension of residence permit.

There was a big head of Bush in the lobby.
According to the caption of that, Den Haag Sculputuur, annual art event will start this week.
I think it is difficult in Japan to put a piece such as politic one in a city hall .

The Hague Sculpture
2008 - 6 June to 31 August 2008
http://www.denhaagsculptuur.nl/index.html

Aya no Tsuzumi

hague286_020
Originally uploaded by tomo(+)

We had a performance of "Aya no Tsuzumi"at Lilly gallery near Theater de Regents.
We could finish our all three performances successfully.
Many guests than I expected. A good reputation.
Sander, the composer seemed to be satisfied as well.

I uploaded a set to flickr. check it here.

Almost

I went to Theater De Regentes to see the performance by Ji-sun Yang. When I entered the room placed innermost in the theater, a scarlet color jumped to the eye. That was the color of hanging fabric wall made of stretchable textile, in which embed three robes from the shoulder toward the base.

Two female dancers were dressing in the fixed-robe. Three musicians (Bass clarinet, Accordion, Cello) were sitting down face to face with dancers.

After the short black out, the performance started. The beginning with fluent atmosphere reminded me of the 3rd movement of Mahler's Symphony No.1, however it's in C moll, instead of D.

Dancers started to move their arms and legs with all deliberate speed. The music had a beautiful and very slow progression like a drawn-out choral. It never stepped out from Aeolian scale just like that dancers didn't come out from the wall.

In the middle of piece, another dancer appeared into the last robe from the backside.
After having a solo of her, she disappeared again. Once performance came to a climax,
everything faded and went back to the original point.

What the title, "Almost" means? Well, it might be a good idea to close the review with this. It's almost as if they're connected.

Who knows?

After watched the music theater by Angus at Korzo Theater, I had a cup of tea with Yoko at a cafe near the Grote Kerk. She has been working for four years as a media artist based in the Hague. We met at the Japan Festival in the Korzo theater. That time there was her installation in the passage, and I liked it. As things turned out, the music in the dance I went to the other day was composed by her husband as well as she did a stage design.

Today I was writing my curriculum vitae to apply for a workshop scheduled to start next October in Bilthoven. However I don't know whether I will be accepted into Second Phase or not, what is clear is that I have to work harder than ever after the example of Yoko.

24 Minutes of Solitude

From the minute I set foot in the space, I felt a good atmosphere.

On a two-by-two square platform sitting in the center of the room, a young woman is buried in a heap of messy clothes. The seats are installed to encircle the stage from three different directions. Three trees also encircle the space, separating the seating blocks. An old gentleman is siting on a chair beside a tree. A young man by another tree...

I have to say that the introduction of the performance could have been better. It may be a harsh critique, due to the inadequate skill of the actor, it was not enough to draw the audience into the world of the play. When the young man sang his first song, I felt it was just another melody.

The young man has a tape recorder with which he replayed his message to the young woman again and again. This effect was interesting. It seemed like the old man was the young man in the future, overlapping in space but not in time. As fragmentary words and music linked little by little, a connection between the casts gradually became clearer.

There were only two musicians; violin and contrabass. They played together by the trees. They moved from one tree to another between each scene. It's indeed disappointing that the sound of the musician's steps interrupted the drama. (especially as later scenes got in the groove) You could say this counter-clockwise stage-managed movement was a sort of metaphor... However, it was not particularly successful.


In the end of the performance, three trees, three actors and musicians came together into the center platform. --it's like putting all the pieces of a memory back together.


24 Minutes of Solitude -
Friday 30 May 2008, 20.30 hrs. at Korzo5HOOG
Angus Barnacle (composition) and Milone Reigman (direction)

rehearsal

I attended to the rehearsal of "Aya no Tsuzumi" for the first time. While I have had many meeting with Sander about the text and reading, I haven't heard the music so far.
To be honest, I didn't expected a quality, because he had reduced a fair amount of the text all the time.

But I was wrong.
The balance between music and text is pretty good. The film is absolutely professional, thanks to the staffs. It seems like the performance will turn out just fine.

eel and avocado with white wine sauce

 

pasta with asparagus, tomato and bacon

 

Mochi-mochi no Ki

 
When I saw this fantasy tree at midnight,
it reminded me of "Mochi-mochi no Ki", a picture book I used to read when I was little.

Fried rice, please.

 

birthday eve

 
I had a dinner with Theo.

Sound Salad!

 

 

 

Death and Mirror

 
Thanks to Naomi, my piece was well received.

narcissus

 

Found room!

 
I decided to move because I found a nice room.

Tuna Pasta

 

diced beef bowl

 

tulip tulip !!!

 

okonomi-yaki

 

lasagna

 

throat sores

 

sakura

 

French Toast

We'll have a Spring Break this week.
I'm going to stay at home for my composition.
Now I'm writing for POW Ensemble consists of
electric guitar and two computers.

Today I tried French toast in a fry pan using hard French bread
I purchased the week before.
I drizzled honey on it and it was delicious.

GIG at TAG

We had a gig at TAG tonight.
Well, I think it went well.

There were many students and graduates from Art science or Sonology department.
Other performances were so noisy that I didn't like so much,
but I had a good time talking and drinking.

performance tomorrow

We had a rehearsal at Pieter's house for our performance tomorrow.
Melodica Quartet will appear in the event, titled "goodbye peggy" at <>TAG.
(Unfortunately, we will be "trio" missing Sander this time.)
We will play with Pieter. See you there!

"Goodbye Peggy"
date: Monday 25 February
doors: 20:30
first act: 21:00
location: <>TAG Den Haag

http://www.tag004.nl/new/

iKnow!

I've been spent most of the day studing English today.
I found a useful website which support a self study English.
It says that their applications are based on brain science,
and it helps learners to memorize.
Additionally, they also offer a kind of community
so that users will be encouraged each other.

If you are interested in this, you can try it at:
http://www.iknow.co.jp/

The title is "iKnow!", but I don't know if you like it...

Drop Out

I was supposed to have the test of music history today, it's hard to imagine that I can answer due to a lack of study, finally I couldn't even go into the room. I feel guilty about slacking my efforts.

After school is over, I went out to have a dinner with my friend.

Improvisation Technology

"Aesthetic and Performance of Electronic Music" is one of the my favorite classes. Today's topic was "improvisation technology" of William Forsythe.

We watched the CD-ROM which Forsythe made in order to enable his dancers to improvise themselves. Actually I saw it last year in Japan and I was really impressed with it. Forsythe provided a technical knowledge and philosophy that considering choreography as geographical drawing. Although it was 10 years ago that he made CD-ROM, it still has impact on choreography.

Turntablist

Sonology Institute hosted the workshop by Takuro Mizuta today. He showed his performance with turntable and computer. He use Max/MSP on computer for real time sampling so that he can play it like another turntable. It is a new instrument as Joel said.

How to compose

We had a weekly colloquium, a regular meeting of composers in KonCon. Ofir and Andrzej presented their music tonight.

Ofir doesn't write any notes but edits sounds with a computer. By his own account, he recorded some improvising sessions and choped them into fragments, then laid out those materials one by one. Yes, that is also the composition as well as writing notes.

In the other hand, Andrzej uses very specific notations such as doubled harmonics or one-eighth microtonal pitches. His score seems to order players to used to some "contemporary" technics in ensemble. During our discussion, someone mentioned that his music sounds like improvisation piece (despite his strict manner of notating). However you must hear constructions in it, so it's different from a improvisation indeed.

Both of them were really interesting. I thought they had achieved good results in a different way. The important thing is not how to make, but what they want to hear. Still, it's connected to each other as you know.

Notation

I attended a Gilius' seminar for the first time in along while.
Today's topic was Ives's symphony no.4.

In the afternoon, I discussed my idea with Cornelis.
I'm thinking about a notation including directions for body movements.
Although the staff also might be able to work for that,
because of what I want to make is more theatrical,
I'm looking for something different way.

And he taught me that some students had tried to do something similar.
I felt anew that this is really good place for me to study.

Westeinde

I went to the concert by Miwako Fujiwara and her students. It was a charity for homeless people at a church in Westeinde. They also played "The First Noel" which I arranged. It was a warm and cozy concert, and provided a good opportunity for little musicians to play in front of an audience as well.

Dinner with Friends

Chie invited us to the dinner. We ate delicious food talking about hometown cultures, memories of school days, hamsters, education and of course, music. We had a good time drinking till the late hours of the night.

Female Film Directors

I saw some DVDs. One of those was a French movie, "UN DIMANCHE A LA CAMPAGNE" directed by Bertrand Tavernier which I bollowed from my friend. It was so pastoral movie that nice to watch on the fine day as like today.

The other two were TV programs on NHK which my father sent me the other day. The one of them features recent flourish activities of female film directors in Japan. Although people try to reduce a difficulty when women work in social, most of the people in a film studio are man indeed.
In this program Lee Bong-woo, a Japanese film producer, interviews to Mika Ninagawa, Miwa Nishikawa, Sachi Hamano and Naomi Kawase. It was a good program. However, unfortunately I have never seen them movies before. I have to check them!

Shoot off!!

Yota, Kei and I got together at Misaki's house.
There was a Misaki's brother, too.

After midnight, we went out to shoot off a firework.
I knew people in the Netherlands had a big celebration
with much firework, but it was bigger and more exciting than expected.

Many people were taking to the streets to display or watch the fireworks.
Sounds like a thunder of a cannon was heard throughout the town,
it made me feel like I was being in the battlefield.
Of course it was colorful and beautiful unlike war,
we enjoyed with a happy smile.

Best wishes for a happy new year from the foggy Hague. :-)