Kojiro Umezaki & Hub New Music – A distance intertwined

Contemporary chamber music featuring the shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese flute, may not be commonplace, but there is some out there, and it’s generally good. Such is the case with this album, a distance intertwined, by flutist Kojiro Umekazi. Five compositions for shakuhachi and small ensemble by as many composers (including Umezaki himself) are presented here. Contemporary without being experimental, the works on the programme are fairly accessible while offering stimulating listening. The imagery and poetry of the Japanese imagination are invoked effectively without ever falling into the trap of pastiche or tourist exoticism. Takuma Itoh’s Faded Aura is perhaps my favorite of the set, with its subtle interplay of reflections and amplification of the shakuhachi by the soloists of the unusual Hub New Music quartet (flute, clarinet, violin, cello). Very impressive indeed. The rest follows suit, with interesting contrasts between Chad Cannon’s Death Masks, the darkest work, and Angel Lam’s Whispers of Sea Rivers, which is tonal, melodic and almost cinematic. SunYoung Park’s Moonlight evokes the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, famous in Japan (so much so that Miyazaki’s Ghibli Studio made a version of it, The Legend of Princess Kaguya). The spirit world and the real world meet through the imagery of the shakuhachi on the one hand, and the quartet on the other. Finally, Umezaki makes his contribution with Tied Together by Twilight, in which the artist paints a portrait of modern Japan in sharp contrasts, torn between modernity and tradition, youth and old age, urbanity and rurality, femininity and masculinity, and so on.

Serious and narratively dynamic music for an instrument with a magical, timeless sound.