Composed by Tomoko Momiyama in 2013 in collaboration with Tambuco Percussion Ensemble

 “Moons of Hidden Times” was composed upon commission from Tambuco Percussion Ensemble (Ricardo Gallardo, Alfredo Bringas, Raul Tudon, and Miguel Gonzalez). It was a result of my close collaboration with the ensemble during Tambuco - Japan Residency Program 2013, funded by the Japan Foundation and Arts Council Tokyo. 

Through intensive workshops, members of the ensemble and I told each other stories of personal episodes that give us grounding, poems and mythologies that identify us, dreams from our past, and memories of our futures, as well as concerns about current social issues. As we visited everyone’s mindscapes and connected at the roots of who we were, a collective narrative about the beginning of music emerged. Various symbols and images from this sharing were translated into musical motives and mapped onto a score. Since every sound was associated with personal experiences of this collective journey, each performer was convinced of the sounds’ meanings. By weaving these intention-infused sounds, I composed “Moons of Hidden Times.” 

When an outsider such as myself intervenes in the relationships among an established community such as Tambuco, paradigms of communication start to shift. By becoming a medium of such alternative communication and designing a space for in-depth dialogues, I hoped to create music with a fresh sense of reality for both the Japanese and the Mexican audiences.

“Moons of Hidden Times” was world-premiered by Tambuco Percussion Ensemble at Sala Xochipilli, National School of Music, UNAM in Mexico City, Mexico, on March 9th, 2013. Since then, the piece has been performed frequently by the ensemble at various concerts internationally. This recording is from the Japan-premiere concert at Tsuda Hall in Tokyo, Japan, on July 3rd, 2013. Please note that the beginning of the piece is quite loud, whereas some sections in the middle are very quiet and quite difficult to hear from the recording. In these sections, the performers are playing very low frequency sounds with spring coils and subtle sounds with bamboo leaves and various kinds of rattles. 


The following was the program note from the world-premier concert in Mexico:

On one rainy morning, at a secluded riverside studio inside a rainforest off of Xalapa, my journey with Tambuco started. Surrounded by chatty instruments from all over the world, members of Tambuco and I sat down together. As the instruments listened to us with their curious ears, we told stories of our memories from the past and the future, touched on our fears and struggles, and searched for the moon in each one of us. We went on a truck in a steep mountain, swam in rivers at a temple of silence, met angels on the road and showed the way, got eaten by pigs every morning, and looked into the landscapes of our dreams. A collective narrative surfaced from this sharing, which became the basis for “Moons of Hidden Times.” Composed through intimate dialogues with Tambuco and their instruments, “Moons of Hidden Times” is a record of our journey since that morning with the chipi-chipi rain. 


Moons Of Hidden Times (2013)

Composed in collaboration with Allison Rockwell (choreographer) for a Butoh dance performance entitled “Falling, Floating & Hanging." After the premier at "Spring Migration Festival" on April 2000 at Roble Dance Studio and later at another performance on May 2000 at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University, California, U.S.A., a string quartet played the music live on stage with the dancers. This is a studio recording of the same piece. 

Kenneth Easwaran (violin), Jane Wong (violin), Jonathan Claridge (viola), Gabriel Trop (cello).

Allison's Journey (2000)

"Tsubuyaki (a murmur)" for a large ensemble

Composed by Tomoko Momiyama.

Originally written for an orchestra in 1999, rearranged for a large ensemble in 2000.  Performed and recoreded live at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University, in California, U.S.A., on May 29th, 2000.

Jeremy Henrickson, conductor 
Stephanie Choi, flute	
Emilie Patton, oboe
Alison Mardsden, clarinet
Tomoko Momiyama, soprano saxophone
Gary Scavone, alto saxophone
Dwight Slater, bassoon
Sandra Shefelbine, horn
Will Buck, trumpet
Joel Knudson, trombone
Anat Caspi, percussion
Jennifer Lay Shyu, percussion
Kenneth Easwaran, violin	
Jane Wong, violin
Jonathan Claridge, viola
Gabriel Trop, cello
Dennis Meredith, double base

"Tsubuyaki (a murmur)" for a large ensemble (2000)

"wa/I: feeling out of harmony in Yokohama"

Composed by Tomoko Momiyama in 2007.
Performed by Ayako (HaLo) (voice, tuner), Osamu Imagome (trombone), Yoshiko Kanda (percussion), Keisuke Mitsuhashi (tape, soprano recorder, voice), Tetsu Saito (contrabass), Gojiro Sakamoto (shamisen), Chiko Suenaga (violin), Sachiyo Tsurumi (computer, tape, whistle, voice), and Kazushige Uchiyama (tape, tin-sha, voice).
Recorded live at Yokohama Minato-mirai Hall on March, 2007.

Three composers-in-residence at Yokohama Minato-mirai Hall 2006-7, Tomoko Momiyama (composer), Sachiyo Tsurumi (composer), and Keisuke Mitsuhashi (music critic), organized and facilitated a community art project named “Hama-Mix=Yokohama + Remix.” Yokohama citizens from diverse backgrounds participated to create music of Yokohama together, through fieldworks and composition workshops. 

"wa/I: feeling out of harmony in Yokohama" was composed by Tomoko Momiyama by re-mixing the musical materials created from these group workshops. The resident composers' re-mixed compositions were premiered by professional musicians together with the workshop participants’ performances of their group works at Yokohama Minato-mirai Hall on March 2007. 


wa/I: feeling out of harmony in Yokohama (2007)

Ballade for Lost Waters (2009)
For solo percussionist, live electronics, tape, and double-shadows			

Composed by Tomoko Momiyama
Sound design by Yamila Rios
Visual design by Mellisa Cruz
Percussion by Mei-Yi Lee

Recorded live at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands, in April, 2009.

PROGRAM NOTE:

People have been fighting to co-exist with water in The Netherlands for as long as they have lived on this part of the earth. By the 13th century, a water management organization existed in Delfland to maintain sluices, or water channels, which were necessary for keeping the waters from river and sea at a safe distance from each other. After over 700 years of building dikes and canals in order to keep this land dry, what has happened to the water?

In 2008, I initiated an art project with Melissa Cruz (visual artist) and Yamila Rios (sonologist) to investigate the relationship between people and their environment in Dutch society, with a specific focus on water. In search of water that is alive, we traveled through the city of The Hague with recorders and hydrophones. From sloots, to polders, to boezems, and finally to the sea, we listened to the voices of the water. This journey was made possible with close assistance from Gemeente Den Haag (municipal government) and Hoogheemraadschap van Delfland (water management institution). 

As a result of this shared journey, a performance piece for a percussionist, tape, and live electronics was composed, where both sound and image were integral to the musical experience. Light and shadows are intertwined with each other to weave an audio-visual poetry, though which the audience is invited to listen to the silence together. “Ballade for Lost Waters” was premiered during the Spring Festival 2009 at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and later performed at different locations in The Hague.

"Ballade for Lost Waters" is a song for the waters we met through our journey, with quotations from the “Zuiderzeeballade,” a Dutch song from 1958. The last verses of the original “Zuiderzeeballade” are as follows:

Eens ging de zee hier tekeer 		(Once there was a wild sea here)
Maar die tijd komt niet weer		(But that time will not return)
't Water ligt nu achter de dijk		(The water lies now behind the dike)
Waar eens de golven het land bedolven	(Where the water used to flood the land)
Golft nu een halmenzee, de oogst is rijp	(Waves in a sea of grain, the harvest is ripe)

Ballade for Lost Waters (2009)

“A Cave Dream” for Soprano, Period Clarinet, Period Violoncello, and Fortepiano

Composed by Tomoko Momiyama in 2010. 

Performed by:
Lilith Verhelst (soprano)
Soren Green (period clarinet)
Anton Baba (period cello)	
Tullia Melandri (period fortepiano) 

It was commissioned by niwebyrth ensemble who specializes in performances of contemporary music for period instruments. The piece was premiered and recorded live by the ensemble at Korzo theater in The Hague, the Netherlands, in February, 2010.

A note on the recording: The piece starts off very quietly with the performers whispering with their breaths, which, unfortunately, is not so audible on the recording. 

PROGRAM NOTE:

One morning in the winter of 2009, I woke up crying from a dream. This, I have called, “A Cave Dream.”

I used several Japanese onomatopoeic words in the text: nuru nuru (slimy and slippery), bira bira (fluttering), jiku jiku (oozing), and hiri hiri (hurting).

At the end of the piece is a musical quotation of “Asuka Bojo” (Yearning for Asuka), composed by Yasuko Kuwano. This song is used as a disaster prevention time-notifying chime for the village of Asuka, in Nara, Japan. Everyday at around sunset, the song echoed all throughout the village, over their valleys and hills via their community loudspeakers, while I stayed in a house above a river in the summer of 2008.   

There are also several other musical inspirations in “A Cave Dream.” One comes from the music of dengaku noh dance in Mizu-umi area of Ikeda village, in Fukui, Japan. This particular tradition of performing art is thought to be developed in the 13th century and passed down for generations since then. I visited this secluded snowing village to participate in the annual noh festival in the winter of 2005.

Another is Senko-no-gi ritual from Kasuga Wakamiya On-matsuri festival at Kasuga shrine in Nara, Japan. It is an opening ritual to welcome Wakamiya spirit of the shrine into their ceremony ground. In a pitch dark forest guided only by the fragrance of burning agar wood, Shinto priests with their Misaki voices solemnly escort the spirit, while gagaku musicians accompany them with the tune of Kyo-un-raku. I attended this 870-year-old ritual in the deep crisp winter of 2006. 

Finally, I quoted a part of a traditional flying song of the Miao people, called “Zhan Zai Gao Gaode Miao Lingshan” (Standing on the peaks of the Miaoling Mountains). The Miao (or Hmong) is a group of ethnic minorities in Southwest China. I heard this song when I visited remote mountain villages in the province of Guizhou over their new year’s festival in the fall of 2007.

TEXT: (by Tomoko Momiyama)

Nuru nuru, bira bira, jiku jiku, hiri hiri

I had an opening on my arm
A wet and sore slit
With frilled skin and hairy lips

I walked down in a cave
A wet and dark tunnel
Descending deeper with each step 
To the bottom

Then the light came
A shrine of secret springs
Hiding under the fountain 
Was a violet bloom

When I reached out for the water
The flower jumped onto my arm
And melted into my wound

Nuru nuru, bira bira, jiku jiku, hiri hiri

Reborn as a plant
You grew from my limb
My lips were your leaves
Your roots were my blood
It was you
I was waiting

I knew that moment
It was you 
I was waiting all my life 
With the wet and burning cut
On my arm

A Cave Dream (2010)

As part of Earth Art Project 2014, I made music with children of nomadic families from the Himalayan mountains by documenting signs we received from the earth and the sky. I worked at two schools in Ladakh, one at 3800 meters high altitude in Nang village, and another at 5000 meters in Puga in the Changtang region. At each school, I stayed for 2 weeks and conducted workshops with the school children to make music through dialogues with their environments. By creating instruments from found objects and making use of natural acoustic phenomena such as the echoes from surrounding mountains and the whistling sound of strong winds, I composed site-specific music performances entitled “Bilungpa’s March” in Nang and “Calling from a Changtang Steppe” in Puga, which were performed by the children. In addition, I created sound installation pieces using recordings from the workshop processes, which were exhibited at the schools.

Calling From A Changtang Steppe (2014)

Little Foot, according to a recent finding published in April 2015, is the fossil of an adult female hominid from 3.7 million years ago. Found at the bottom of a hole deep inside a dark cave, Little Foot is one of the earliest known ancestors of humans. I met her for the first time when I visited the Cradle of Humankind in 2014 as part of Unyazi Festival in South Africa. “Where Little Foot Sleeps” follows a dream she might have had at her graveyard as she would have listened to kaleidoscopic memories of the future in 3.7 million years’ time. The piece quotes a healing song of the Eland spirits from the San people, an indigenous group of hunter-gatherers in South Africa, as well as the music of a traditional deer dance from the Iwate prefecture in northern Japan, in which a human and a deer dance together on the borderline that separates them. “Where Little Foot Sleeps” was commissioned by the pianist Satoko Inoue and premiered by herself and Jill Richards from South Africa at Ryogoku Art Festival 2015.

Where Little Foot Sleeps (2015)

“The Zoo, the Ship, and the Beggar” 

Composed by Tomoko Momiyama in 2012.

Performed by children of Bhumi Indria (voice), Ilga Sutopo (violin), and Bangkit Sutopo (violin) in Borobudur, Indonesia.
Recorded by Found Sound Nation and edited by Found Sound Nation and Tomoko Momiyama.

“The Zoo, the Ship, and the Beggar” was composed during my participation in Sharing Art Garden and Festival of Ocean Mountain Arts, in Borobudur, Indonesia, with a support from the Japan Foundation, in April of 2012. The festival was an international event, which aimed to investigate the relationships between cultural heritage and archeology, religion, and mythology, through intercultural dialogues. I stayed in Borobudur for 3 weeks to conduct research and facilitate music workshops with the local people. 

There have been persistent conflicts among people in Borobudur since the 70’s, when many of their lands were taken away to build a cultural heritage park around the Borobudur temple. Now the local community is very much isolated from the temple, which used to be the pillar of their collective identity. Thus, I designed and implemented a community-based project in order to reclaim the temple as the people’s garden, even if temporary, and invite the villagers to listen to each other and their environment. 

I collaborated with the children from "Bhumi Indria," an interfaith kindergarten located right in front of the heritage park. Together, we traveled across the park fence to visit the temple and talked to the reliefs, while playing with our voices to recreate the sounds around us. I also worked closely with a teenage brother and sister from the local village, who had taught themselves how to play violins. As a result, I composed “the Zoo, the Ship, and the Beggar” for the 25 kindergarten children and the violin duo. In this piece, the following 3 layers with different dimensions of time are interweaved with each other: imaginary and timeless stories by the children inspired from the temple reliefs, the children’s voice orchestra representing soundscapes from different times of a day in their village, and the violin duet playing backward in time based on a mode progression from a Javanese shadow puppet theater. 

“The Zoo, the Ship, and the Beggar” was performed by the children at the Borobudur temple and later recorded in the village in collaboration with Found Sound Nation from New York. This is an edited version from the recording. 

The Zoo, the Ship, and the Beggar (2012)

The Verde Island Passage between the islands of Luzon and Mindoro in the Philippines is considered to be “the center of the center” of the world’s marine biodiversity. It is known to have the most number of hard-coral species and the highest concentration of marine life –– many of which are globally endangered species –– than any other area in the world. However, this rich ecosystem is now under serious threat with many rapid developments underway, including a large-scale gold mining project, that are often implemented without thorough examination and sustainable management plans involving all the stakeholders. “Subli ng Karagatan: a Chant for the Sea Forest” was composed through workshop sessions with the elders of Sinala Subli Dancers and local high school students from Batangas (SBC-PAO Repertory Brigid) and premiered by them at a beach facing the Verde Island Passage as part of the 33rd Asian Composers League Conference and Festival. The piece quotes a spiritual chant melody of the Subli tradition that is native to Batangas and asks for an audience participation: the audience members are invited to imagine the sounds of numerous species that live inside the sea in front of them and realize these sounds with their own voice. The imagined inner-water soundscape is then offered to the sea, thus making the sea ultimately the audience of the music. “Subli ng Karagatan: a Chant for the Sea Forest” is a humble prayer that we humans may be able to act responsibly by being sensible to the right of all living forms to exist.

Subli Ng Karagatan - A Chant For The Sea Forest (2015)

Originally from Japan and currently based in Tokyo, Tomoko Momiyama graduated from Stanford University with B.A. in Music and Human Biology in 2001. Since then, she has been internationally active as a music composer, dramaturg, and producer of multi-disciplinary art events, installations, and performances. Her works, many of which are community-based and site-specific, have been performed throughout Japan, as well as in different parts of Asia, Europe, Central America, and the U.S. 
By intervening in the relationships between people, cultures, and environments, Tomoko weaves diverse narratives into multi-layered music that is original, and yet anonymous and universal. Composed through in-depth collaborations with different localities, her music is intimately connected to its’ contexts of creation and questions what is home in today’s society. In search of music that is folk and contemporary at the same time, she has developed a unique methodology for collective composition involving people from various backgrounds, who are not necessarily professionally trained in music. In addition to working with communities of displaced people, disaster survivors, social minority groups, children, and elderly people, Tomoko has collaborated with international music ensembles and composers, visual artists, dance choreographers, theater artists, educators, and shamans, among others. Her projects cross a wide range of media and vary from live concerts to electroacoustic music for radio, from audience-participatory sound installations to theater pieces on disability and gender issues, and ritual performances inviting people to communicate with natural elements in our environment, such as wind, water, and trees. By functioning as a medium of communication and sharing moments of paradigm shifts through creative dialogues and exchanges, Tomoko challenges pre-existing social frameworks and personal boundaries, while addressing the issues of identity from multiple perspectives.
Commissions and invitations include the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (Japan), Yokohama Minato-mirai Hall (Japan), Bowdoin Summer Music Festival (U.S.A.), Aix-en-Provence Festival Academy (France), Camera Japan Festival (The Netherlands), INA-GRM (French National Institute of Audio Visual – Music Research Group), Unyazi Electronic Music Festival (South Africa), Earth Art Project (India), Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Festival (Indonesia), and etc. Winner of the Japanese Government Overseas Study Programme for Artists, Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company “Able Art on Stage” grant program, and the Nippon Foundation Fellowships for Asian Public Intellectuals.


Tomoko Momiyama

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