Boku no Idaho (ボクのアイダホ) (2023) by Ken Ueno
for solo shakuhachi (any size)
Recorded by Reison Kuroda

In May 2022, I began working on a documentary about Paul Chihara, the only senior role model I have as a Japanese American composer. During that same month, my crew and I took Paul to revisit Minidoka, where he was incarcerated as a child during World War II. While there, my crew and I shot B-roll footage of the landscape, the remains of the internment camp, the dormitory area, and the mess hall. For these scenes, I felt it was most appropriate to use traditional Japanese instruments.
Earlier, I had made a short film featuring the dormitory area and the mess hall, for which I composed a piece for solo shō (mouth organ). There was one particular scene I knew I wanted to highlight: footage of the railroad tracks near Minidoka. These tracks are where Paul, as a young child, was brought to the camp by train. The image of these tracks has been ingrained in his psyche, haunting him with recurring nightmares throughout his life. I originally wrote a piece for solo shakuhachi to underscore this scene. However, after completing the composition and meeting the young virtuoso Reison Kuroda, who has since recorded this piece, I have greater hopes for the piece as a stand-alone concert work.
The title uses the pronoun "boku," the Japanese first-person singular diminutive possessive, implying "my Idaho" from the perspective of a young boy. The title also nods to the Keanu Reeves movie My Own Private Idaho, where beautiful footage of America's expansive landscape is ironically contrasted with the reality of it being a site of trauma.

Boku no Idaho (ボクのアイダホ)

WATT

A recipient of the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, Ken Ueno, is a composer/vocalist/sound artist who is currently a Professor at UC Berkeley, where he holds the Jerry and Evelyn Hemmings Chambers Distinguished Professor Chair in Music. Ensembles and performers who have played Ken’s music include Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky, Mayumi Miyata, Teodoro Anzellotti, Aki Takahashi, Wendy Richman, Greg Oakes, BMOP, Alarm Will Sound, Steve Schick and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Nieuw Ensemble, and Frances-Marie Uitti. His music has been performed at such venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MusikTriennale Köln Festival, the Muziekgebouw, Ars Musica, Warsaw Autumn, Other Minds, the Hopkins Center, Spoleto USA, Steim, and at the Norfolk Music Festival. Ken’s piece for the Hilliard Ensemble, Shiroi Ishi, was featured in their repertoire for over ten years, with performances at such venues as Queen Elizabeth Hall in England, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and was aired on Italian national radio, RAI 3. Another work, Pharmakon, was performed dozens of times nationally by Eighth Blackbird during their 2001-2003 seasons. A portrait concert of Ken’s was featured on MaerzMusik in Berlin in 2011. In 2012, he was a featured artist on Other Minds 17. In 2014, Frances-Mairie Uitti and the Boston Modern Orchestra premiered his concerto for two-bow cello and orchestra, and Guerilla Opera premiered a run of his chamber opera, Gallo, to critical acclaim. He has performed as soloist in his vocal concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in New York and Boston, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Lithuanian National Symphony, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, and with orchestras in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and California. Ken holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. A monograph CD of three orchestral concertos was released on the Bmop/sound label. His bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music.

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