Music of Japan Today examines cross-cultural confluences in contemporary Japanese art-music through multiple approaches from twenty international composers, performers, and scholars. Like the format of the MOJT symposia (1992-2007) held in the United States, the book is in two parts. In Part I, three award-winning Japanese composers discuss the construction of their compositional techniques and aesthetic orientations. Part II contains nineteen essays by scholars and creative musicians, arranged in a general chronological frame. The first section discusses connections of the music and ideas of Japanese composers during the time surrounding the Second World War to Japan's politics; section two presents recent perspectives on the music and legacy of Japan's most internationally renowned composer, Toru Takemitsu (1930-96). Section three investigates innovative, cross-cultural uses of Japanese and Western instruments (grouped by common instrumental families - voice, flutes, strings), shaped by historical traditions, physical design, and acoustic characteristics and constraints. Section four examines computer music by mid-career composers, and the final section looks at four current Japanese societies, within and off-shore Japan, and their music: spirituality and wind band music in Japan, avant-garde sound artists in Tokyo, Japanese composers in the UK, and the role of cell phone ringtones in the Japanese music market.
About the Author: E. Michael Richards is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and co-founder and director of the Music of Japan Today international symposia held in the United States (1992-2007). Recordings of his work as an interpreter of contemporary music are on the Neuma, Mode, Nine Winds, Opus One, and CRI labels, and his monograph The Clarinet of the Twenty-First Century is a leading study of extended techniques. He is a recipient of a Japan-US Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship, sponsored by the governments of both countries. Kazuko Tanosaki is the Director of the Graduate Certificate Program in Music at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and co-founder and director of the Music of Japan Today international symposia (1992-2007). Articles of her work have been published in Ongaku Geijutsu and Ongaku no Tomo, and her work as a pianist of contemporary music has been recorded on the Nine Winds, Opus One, and CRI labels. She is a winner of the Young Artists Competition in La Jolla, California.