A concert program with Ensemble N_JP (Japan/USA), featuring traditional Japanese music and contemporary works by Japanese and American composers. The program will include the US premiere of Andolangen, a music-video composition by Philadelphia composer Gene Coleman, based on architecture by Tadao Ando. Celebrate Japan with a program that focuses on Japanese music, architecture and design sensibility, viewed through the lens of globalization.

Philadelphia composer Gene Coleman formed Ensemble N_JP in 2001 as a vehicle for his ongoing work with outstanding musicians from Japan and guest artists from the USA and Europe. The goal of the group is to explore new relationships between traditional and experimental art and to create a platform for cultural exchange between Japan and the West. These ideas are made manifest through concert programs, multimedia works and educational projects. For the PMA program, traditional music for the Japanese instruments Sho (bamboo mouth organ) and Koto (large 13 string zither) is heard in relation to a new composition by the venerable Japanese composer Yuji Takahashi. A special feature of the program will be the US premiere of Andolangen, a music and video composition by Gene Coleman, scored for an ensemble of western and Japanese instruments with two screen video projection. Andolangen is one in a series of works by Coleman that explore relationships between music, architecture and video in the context of globalization. In Andolangen, the work springs from the primal language of form and space found in Tadao Ando’s elegant Langen Foundation building, using it as a "catalytic text" for a music and video composition. The graphic elements of the building itself become part of the score and composition, through a process that is both formal and poetic. In this way, Coleman asks the question "what does this building sound like

This program is part of the Art after 5 series at the PMA and will also feature a screening of Making the Modern, a film by Harry Lynch that follows Tadao Ando’s design and construction of the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, with commentary by architect Frank Gerry and artist Richard Serra. The film will screen at 5:45 and 7:00 PM in the PMA auditorium. An introduction by Stephanie C. Feldman, Instructor in the School of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania will accompany the 7:00 PM screening.

PROGRAM:
5:45 to 6:45 –
(Yatsuhashi Kengyo) (Koto solo 17th Century traditional music)
Ryuko Mizutani (Koto)
Tori no Yoni (Like a Bird)" (Tadao Sawai) 1985

Ryuko Mizutani (Koto)
III. Solo composition for Sho by Ko Ishikawa
Ko Ishikawa (Sho)
IV. "Koto nado (Yuji Takahashi) for koto and ensemble (2000)

Ryuko Mizutani (Koto) and Ensemble N_JP

PAUSE

7:15 to 8:15
V. Improvisations
featuring Ensemble N_JP (Ko Ishikawa (sho), Ryuko Mizutani (koto),
Kazuhisa Uchihashi (e-guitar) and US musicians)

VI. "Andolangen" (Gene Coleman)
For Ensemble with 2 screen video projection (2007)

Ensemble N_JP (Japan/USA)
conducted by Thaddeus Squire
Ko Ishikawa (sho)
Ryuko Mizutani (koto)
KazuhisaUchihashi</strong> (e-guitar)
Gene Coleman (bass clarinet)
Alban Bailly (shamisen and guitar)
Gordon Beeferman (piano)
Kevin McFarland (cello)
Nick Lerman (video editor and technical advisor)

Andolangen was commissioned by the Culture Foundation of Nordrhein Westphalia and the E-Mex Ensemble (Germany). Support for this program was made possible by: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia, The Foundation for Contemporary Art, Soundfield, NFP.