(Cycles) what falls must rise

– Kojiro Umezaki

Born in 1968 in Tokyo, Japan

This work was premiered in 2009 at Dartmouth College. It was originally scored for shakuhachi, string quartet, and electronics, but this version expands the quartet to full orchestra.

Kojiro Umezaki is a composer, performer, and educator whose work bridges traditional Japanese music and contemporary artistic practice. Best known as a virtuoso performer on the shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute, Umezaki has built a career exploring connections between ancient musical traditions, modern technology, improvisation, and global collaboration. A member of the Silkroad Ensemble for many years, he has worked alongside artists from a wide range of musical backgrounds, creating music that feels deeply rooted in tradition while also strikingly fresh and experimental.

His work (Cycles) what falls must rise reflects many of these artistic interests. As the title suggests, the piece is concerned with repetition, renewal, and transformation. The idea of cycles—both in nature and in human experience—serves as the emotional and structural foundation of the music. Rather than moving in a straightforward linear direction, the work unfolds through recurring gestures, evolving textures, and patterns that seem to return in altered forms.

Listeners may notice a strong sense of breath throughout the piece, an influence that comes naturally from Umezaki’s background as a shakuhachi performer. Even when the music becomes rhythmically active or texturally dense, there remains an organic quality to its pacing, as though the music is inhaling and exhaling. Moments of stillness are just as important as moments of intensity, creating a sense of balance between motion and reflection.

The title what falls must rise also suggests resilience and renewal. Musical ideas often emerge, dissolve, and then return transformed, giving the piece an almost meditative quality. Umezaki avoids dramatic excess in favor of gradual development and subtle shifts in color and atmosphere. The result is music that invites close listening and rewards patience.

Another striking aspect of the work is its blending of sonic worlds. Traditional influences coexist naturally with contemporary textures and techniques, creating music that feels difficult to place in a single category. This fluidity is central to Umezaki’s artistic voice. Rather than treating musical traditions as fixed or isolated, he approaches them as living practices capable of constant reinvention.

Ultimately, (Cycles) what falls must rise is less about telling a specific story than about creating an experience of motion, return, and renewal. It encourages listeners to reflect on patterns in their own lives while becoming immersed in a sound world that is at once intimate, atmospheric, and quietly powerful.

Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain

– Angel Lam

Born August 8, 1978, in Hong Kong

This work was premiered on January 12, 2025, by the South Bend Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alastair Willis. It is scored for shakuhachi, piccolo, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, percussion, harp, piano, and strings.

Born in Hong Kong and now based in New York, Angel Lam has built a reputation as one of today’s most imaginative cross-cultural composers. A protégé of Tan Dun and a graduate of both the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Peabody Institute, Lam draws inspiration from Chinese philosophy, nature, spirituality, and traditional musical practices while writing in a thoroughly contemporary voice. Her music often seeks stillness and reflection rather than dramatic confrontation, inviting listeners into sound worlds that feel meditative, atmospheric, and deeply personal. Whether writing for orchestra, chamber ensemble, or multimedia collaboration, Lam frequently explores the relationship between humanity and the natural world.

Empty Mountain, Spirit Rain reflects many of those artistic interests. The title itself evokes classical Chinese landscape painting and poetry, where mountains, mist, rain, and empty space are not simply scenic details but symbols of spiritual awareness and inner balance. The phrase suggests a landscape that is quiet yet alive — a place where silence and sound coexist.

The composer explains the background of the piece with heartbreaking candor.

Faded Aura

– Takuma Itoh

Born 1984 in Kanagawa, Japan

This work was premiered on November 11, 2017, at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. The orchestral version with shakuhachi was premiered on January 12, 2025, by the South Bend Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alastair Willis.

Japanese composer Takuma Itoh has emerged as a distinctive voice among a younger generation of composers blending atmospheric sound worlds with vivid emotional storytelling. Born in Japan and active internationally, Itoh has written works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, wind groups, and multimedia collaborations. His music often explores texture and color as much as melody and rhythm, creating immersive sonic environments that invite listeners into moments of reflection. Drawing influence from both contemporary concert music and cinematic sound design, Itoh’s works balance modern techniques with an immediately communicative emotional language.

Faded Aura is a striking example of that aesthetic. Rather than telling a literal story, the piece unfolds like a memory gradually coming into focus—and then slipping away again. The title itself suggests something once radiant that has dimmed over time: a lingering emotional impression, a half-remembered place, or the fading trace of human connection. Throughout the work, Itoh explores this idea through shimmering orchestral colors, fragile textures, and slowly evolving harmonic layers.

From the opening moments, listeners are drawn into an atmosphere that feels suspended in time. Soft instrumental entrances emerge almost imperceptibly, as if materializing out of silence. The music does not rush forward in a traditional dramatic arc; instead, it breathes and expands organically. Itoh frequently layers delicate instrumental timbres to create a glowing sonic haze, allowing individual lines to surface briefly before dissolving back into the ensemble. This constant appearance and disappearance become one of the defining gestures of the piece.

Although Faded Aura contains moments of intensity, its power often lies in restraint and the use of the shakuhachi. Rather than relying on overt virtuosity or sharp contrasts, Itoh shapes tension through gradual accumulation and subtle shifts in orchestral color. Small harmonic changes can suddenly alter the emotional temperature of the music, transforming serenity into unease or nostalgia into quiet wonder. Listeners may notice how carefully silence and resonance are treated, with echoes and sustained tones becoming expressive elements.

At its core, Faded Aura invites contemplation. The work encourages audiences to listen closely to texture, atmosphere, and emotional nuance rather than searching for a single narrative destination. Like a fading photograph or a distant recollection, the music seems to hover between presence and absence. By the final pages, the aura of the title has not disappeared completely—it lingers delicately in the air, leaving behind an impression that feels both elusive and deeply human.

Ballet for Martha (Appalachian Spring)

-- Aaron Copland

Born November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn, New York
Died December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown, New York

The first performance of this work, in its original version for thirteen instruments, took place on October 30, 1944, at the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.  Copland’s suite for full orchestra was first performed on October 4, 1945, by the New York Philharmonic, with Artur Rodzinski conducting.  This larger version is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, percussion, piano, harp, and strings.

Described by Leonard Bernstein as the “Dean of American Music,” Aaron Copland delighted in his role as its elder statesman in the later years of his life.  Perhaps this is due to the seventy years he was involved in various musical endeavors. Before launching his compositional career with his resounding Organ Symphony in a 1925 New York concert, he had studied at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau in Paris since 1921.  Among the distinguished faculty, noted pedagogue Nadia Boulanger’s reputation stood above all others, teaching generations of American composers from Copland to Philip Glass.  Barely in his twenties, Copland’s reputation rested as a renegade among composers, using harmonies that were often dissonant and abrasive. 

In the late 1930s, the composer began to face the reality of shrinking audiences at orchestral concerts.  He knew there must be a way to draw people back into the concert hall and to energize orchestral music.  Copland’s new “simple” style, which often quoted folk music, used an approachable musical language in an effort to remedy the problem.  He often incorporated jazz-inspired rhythms and elements of popular music to express his ideas, while drawing listeners closer to his music.

Having composed several works for the stage and screen in the 1930s, among them his captivating scores for the film versions of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and Wilder’s Our Town, Copland became well established in those circles.  In 1939 Copland composed the incidental music for Irwin Shaw’s Quiet City.  Four years later in 1943, he was in Hollywood writing the music for his fourth film, The North Star – an irresistible piece of wartime propaganda with a stellar cast and a screenplay by Lillian Hellman, created to build a sense of trust among the American people for our Soviet allies – when Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge contacted him with a commission for a new ballet for the renowned dancer-choreographer Martha Graham.  Copland agreed to compose what would be his fourth ballet. 

Once Coolidge, Copland, and Graham agreed on the terms, all that remained to be determined was the subject.  In time, the two collaborators settled on the story, as told by a program note in the published score.

Beginning work on the score while still in Hollywood, Copland continued during a subsequent vacation in Mexico.  He finished the work the following summer during a teaching stint at Harvard University.  Copland was aware of the small stage and pit in the Coolidge Auditorium at Washington’s Library of Congress.  Because of these limitations, the work was scored for a compact chamber ensemble of just thirteen instruments.  The version most often performed today is the suite that Copland arranged a few months later to be played by full orchestra.  For this version, the composer removed just one ten-minute block of music from a single location in the score, resulting in a sense of continuity seldom found in such suites.

Despite the rural atmosphere often attributed to this music, Copland used only one pre-existing melody – the familiar “Simple Gifts,” heard near the end of the ballet.  Perhaps most interesting of all is that the title of the work did not come about until the day before the performance.  Martha Graham stumbled across the exhortation “O Appalachian Spring!” in Hart Crane’s epic poem “The Bridge,” and it seemed to fit perfectly.  The official title of the score remains “Ballet for Martha.”  Copland wrote,

©2008 Orpheus Music Prose & Craig Doolin / www.orpheusnotes.com