= Contemporary music that pursues modernity without losing its love for sound itself or the physicality of instruments by classicasobi
As a Japanese person, this day is special to me. It is the day Japan surrendered at the end of World War II. When I lived in Japan, I spent August 15 visiting my ancestors’ graves. In Japan, people remember August 15 as the day the war ended. It also falls during Obon, a period when people welcome their ancestors home, visit their graves, and spend time with their families. Afterward, people often took time to reflect on the war.
Here in New York, the city goes about its ordinary routines, as it does every day. But as someone who grew up in Japan, I still carry memories that are inscribed in this particular day.
The fifth concert of Time Spans 2026 was Old School Contemporary. Composer Augusta Read Thomas curated the program. All of the works except her own were commissioned by the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition, while Solstice Ritual was commissioned by Juilliard. I was told that the festival’s artistic director, Thomas Fichter, had asked Augusta to create the program, and she put it together.
After the first four concerts, it felt as though I had entered a completely different world. It was a distinctive, dreamlike world—an extraordinary program performed beautifully. All of the works were composed after 2020, and with the exception of Augusta’s piece, they were all New York premieres.
Melinda Wagner
Limbic Fragments, 2024*
for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, horn, harp, piano, 2 percussion, 2 violins, viola, and cello
NY Premiere
Melinda Wagner (1957–) is one of America’s leading contemporary composers. Born in Philadelphia, she studied composition at Hamilton College, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied with George Crumb, Shulamit Ran, Richard Wernick, and others. In 1999, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion. She currently teaches composition at Juilliard.
Limbic Fragments is a work in which fragments of memory and emotion continually transform. I enjoyed the ensemble's warmth and comfort and the individual colors of the instruments.
Throughout the program, something about the ensemble’s tuning and sound made me think of a nineteenth-century conception of instrumental color. I could sense that their musical minds, habits, and ways of thinking were deeply rooted in classical music.
With a string quartet, I often feel that the players exist completely within the contemporary world. Here, however, the strings were joined by winds, a large percussion section, harp, and piano. It was almost a lavish orchestra, producing countless fragments of sound, each with its own character.
I could taste the wood's texture in the xylophone and the triangle's metallic sensation.
In the large-scale orchestra of Rihm’s music on the first day, I was so absorbed in the world Rihm was creating that I hardly noticed the individual character of each instrument. With Wagner, however, I could hear her affection for sound itself. Each instrument and each combination of instruments was played with such care, revealing the composer’s interest in the physical character of sound.
This was a completely different world from what I had experienced at Time Spans up to that point.
Old School.
It is a phrase I often hear in hip-hop and Black culture. It suggests a world with a certain flavor that comes from decades ago.
When we pursue modernity, we can lose something.
The people in Chicago who created and championed this music may be radically contemporary, but they still care deeply about the sound's flavor inherited from the past. The keys, harmonies, and forms of the fragments may have changed, but the timbre and physical sensation of sound remain important.
What I felt in Limbic Fragments was much more stripped down—the pure colors of the instruments themselves.
It was as though everything had been placed on a large, empty plate. The individual sounds of the percussion, strings, and winds, each carrying the character embedded in the instruments and the players, were placed into the space one by one.
I also became very aware of how transparent the acoustic space was.
Sean Shepherd
Simple Machines – Air, Churn, Hover, 2024*
for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, horn, harp, piano, 2 percussion, 2 violins, viola, and cello
NY Premiere
The piece begins in a drowsy world reminiscent of Berg, then shifts to the image of a small machine: faithful, chaotic, compulsive, and constantly in motion.
Sean Shepherd, who was born in Nevada, studied at Indiana University, Juilliard, and Cornell University. Major ensembles and orchestras have commissioned his music, including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Cleveland Orchestra.
This piece was also remarkably warm and comfortable.
Small ensembles kept emerging within the larger ensemble. The music moved through constantly changing combinations of instruments, and I found the process fascinating. It reminded me of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements.
The piece consists of three sections. Distortions and displacements of sound, blurred oscillations, rubbing, striking—each of these gestures was handled with extraordinary care. The performance felt deeply attentive to the physical character of every sound.
Ramon Lazkano
A Glitch at the Edge, 2024*
for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, horn, harp, piano, 2 percussion, 2 violin, viola, and cello
NY Premiere
The third piece was more experimental.
It explored the materiality of sound itself, time, silence, and resonance.
Ramon Lazkano, from the Basque region of Spain, studied composition and orchestration at the Paris Conservatoire with Gérard Grisey and Alain Bancquart, and continued his studies in Montreal. He teaches at Musikene, the Basque music college.
A Glitch at the Edge evokes a malfunction, a flaw, a momentary breakdown. Lazkano is interested in the “oldness” of instruments themselves and in the physical and mechanical limitations contained within the act of performance.
In the first two pieces, the orchestra repeated and accumulated sounds, while the performers continually manipulated them.
With Lazkano, the focus shifted toward tension and experimentation.
After having fully experienced the individuality of the instruments, we began to listen differently: How is a sound produced? How far can it be extended? At what point does it begin to collapse?
It was an extremely delicate work.
Long notes in the flute and horn sustained the tension, while fragments continually appeared and disappeared.
By this point, the first three works had gradually accumulated a distinctly Chicagoan sense of contemporary music in the listener’s ear.
Frédéric Durieux
Theater of Shadows I, 2022*
for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, horn, harp, piano, 2 percussion, 2 violin, viola, and cello
NY Premiere
Frédéric Durieux (1959–) was born in Paris. He studied with Betsy Jolas and Ivo Malec at the Paris Conservatoire, then studied electronic music and computer music at IRCAM before spending time at the Villa Medici in Rome. He came into contact with the musical worlds of Boulez, Ligeti, Grisey, and Ferneyhough, and currently teaches composition at the Paris Conservatoire.
He has also been influenced by literature, theater, and contemporary visual art.
In Theater of Shadows I, written as a tribute to a deceased painter, shadowy figures projected onto a wall seem to move in the heat of a lamp. The music suggests the sudden appearance of the dead—their memories, their spirits—and creates a dreamlike, unstable world through glissandi, ambiguous sonorities, and shifting rhythms.
Augusta Read Thomas
Solstice Ritual – Homage to Varèse and Ravel, 2024
for flute, oboe, clarinet, harp, piano, celeste, 4 percussion, 2 violin, viola, and cello
In contrast to the ghostly world of the previous piece, Augusta Read Thomas’s music enveloped us in powerful, warm sounds filled with color and energy, like light changing inside a prism.
Augusta Read Thomas (1964–) was born in New York and studied at Tanglewood and Yale, among other places, with teachers including Oliver Knussen and Jacob Druckman. She taught for many years at the University of Chicago and served as Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Every timbre and melody seemed filled with dreams. Each instrument felt almost like its own power spot within the music.
The work was written for fourteen virtuoso musicians and commissioned by the Juilliard School. There were four percussion setups.
The piece imagines a musical ritual celebrating the sun's movement through the solstices. Bells, drums, harp, piano, celesta, and other instruments create a constantly changing spectrum of sound and energy, like light refracting through a prism.
It is also a homage to the percussive power of Edgar Varèse and Ravel's refined orchestration. Each of the fourteen musicians has a solo moment.
Everyone in this program is also a teacher at a university or conservatory.
So why did I experience all of this music as Old School, even though every piece was written after 2020?
Perhaps because these composers still believe deeply in things that classical music has cultivated over a very long period of time: the timbre of instruments, harmony, melody, rhythm, ensemble playing, and the technical abilities of performers.
When we pursue modernity, we look for something new.
But in searching for the new, we can sometimes lose the flavor contained within sound itself—the physical presence of each individual instrument.
This Old School program let me experience music's fascination again through a contemporary lens.
In Wagner, I could savor the timbres of the xylophone, triangle, winds, and strings. In Shepherd, combinations of instruments and repetition became the mechanisms that moved the music forward. In Lazkano, I listened closely to the delicate physical movements of the instruments. In Durieux, timbre became an image of shadow and memory. Finally, in Augusta Read Thomas’s work, Varèse and Ravel—two giants of twentieth-century music—became a way to rediscover the richness of timbre, rhythm, harmony, and melody themselves.
That is why, although all of these composers are contemporary, I sensed a common feeling among them: a love of instrumental sound.
And all of them are teaching the next generation.
They are not creating “contemporary music” by cutting themselves off from the past. They carry the techniques, ears, and traditions of classical music they inherited into the present.
After listening to Kelley Sheehan and Mark Andre, I was confronted with more fundamental questions such as: What is sound? What is an instrument? What is performance?
In their music, my awareness expanded beyond the traditional sound of instruments toward acoustic phenomena, the body, electronic sound, and space.
This program reminded me of something simpler:
Perhaps composers write music because they love certain instruments.
And sometimes, before asking what music can become, it is worth remembering why we fell in love with sound in the first place.
Note: The title “Old School” was inspired by the gallerist sitting next to me at the concert.
8.15.2026
日本人の私にとって特別な日だ。第二次世界大戦で日本が降伏した日だ。日本にいた頃、この日は墓参りを終えたあとの一日だった。8月15日は、日本では「終戦の日」と記憶されている。お盆の時期でもあり、先祖を迎え、墓を参り、家族と過ごしたあとに、戦争について考えたりする機会が多かった。
ニューヨークにいると、街はいつものようにそれぞれの日常を送っている。しかし、日本で育った私のなかには、この日に刻まれた記憶が今も残っている。
タイムスパンズ2026の5回目はオールドスクールコンテンポラリーだった。このプログラムは作曲家のAugusta Read Thomasが選んだ。彼女の曲以外はChicago Center for Contemporary Compositionに委嘱され、Solstice Ritualはジュリーアドが委嘱した。この日の公演はアーティスティックディレクターのトーマスがオーガスタに依頼し、後は彼女がプログラムを組んだそうだ。昨日までの4回が嘘のように、その世界は独特で夢の様な世界だった。素晴らしい演奏とプログラムだった。曲は全て2020年以降に作られたもので、オーガスタ以外はニューヨーク初演となった。
Melinda Wagner
Limbic Fragments, 2024*
for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, horn, harp, piano, 2 percussion, 2 violin, viola, and cello
* NY Premiere
メリンダ・ワーグナー（Melinda Wagner, 1957–）は、アメリカを代表する現代作曲家の一人。フィラデルフィアに生まれ、Hamilton College、シカゴ大学、ペンシルベニア大学で作曲を学び、George Crumb、Shulamit Ran、Richard Wernickらに師事した。1999年には《Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion》でピューリッツァー賞を受賞。現在はジュリアード音楽院で作曲を教えている。
Limbic Fragments、記憶と感情の断片が変化し続ける。とても暖かくて心地いいアンサンブルと楽器の音色を楽しんだ。このプログラムを通して、彼らのチューニングは19世紀の音色だった。彼らのマインドや習慣、考え方の基礎がクラシックをベースにしているのが解る。ジャックカルテットは彼らは完全に現代性の中に生きているように感じる。弦楽四重奏に管楽器と沢山の打楽器、そしてハープとピアノ。豪華なオーケストラが沢山の音の断片を奏でる。ひとつひとつに味わいがある。木琴の木の感触やトライアングルの金属の感触。一日目のリームの大規模なオーケストラでは、そういった一つの楽器がもつ味わいより、リームの描いている世界に心を奪われ気が付かなかったが、メリンダの心のこもった音への興味と筆遣いを、一つ一つの楽器やアンサンブルが丁寧に奏でる様子は昨日までのタイムスパンズとは別世界だった。Old School。ヒップホップやブラックカルチャーの世界でよく耳にする。多分数十年前の味のある世界感だ。現代性を追求すると、失われるものがある。この曲とその音を扱うシカゴの尖った人たちは昔から続く、音楽の味をキーやハーモニーや音の断片の形は変わっても、その音色や感触を大切にしている。
ディメンナの感触は、何もかも取り除いた純粋な彼らの音色だった。大きな皿に、打楽器や弦楽器や管楽器のひとつひとつの彼らに染み付いた音色が、空間に奏でられていった。ディメンナがとても透明な空間だということもよくわかった。
Sean Shepherd
Simple Machines - Air, Churn, Hover, 2024*
for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, horn, harp, piano, 2 percussion, 2 violin, viola, and cello
* NY Premiere
ベルクのまどろむような世界から始まった。忠実に、混沌として、強迫的に動き続ける小さな機械。アメリカ・ネバダ州出身のSeanは、インディアナ大学、ジュリアード音楽院、コーネル大学で学び、ニューヨーク・フィルハーモニック、ボストン交響楽団、シカゴ交響楽団、クリーヴランド管弦楽団などから作品を委嘱されてきた。これもとても暖かくて居心地がよかった。小さなアンサンブルが沢山出て来た。いろんな楽器の組み合わせでアンサンブルが進んでいって楽しかった。ストラビンスキーの３楽章の交響曲を思い出した。曲は3つの部分からあって、音のゆがみやズレ、ぼんやり音を揺らしたり、擦ったり、叩いたり、そういったひとつひとつがとても丁寧で心が籠った演奏だった。
https://youtu.be/KlZg7pDOxFc?si=RwTDo8IHy8Syz3s0
Ramon Lazkano
A Glitch at the Edge, 2024*
for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, horn, harp, piano, 2 percussion, 2 violin, viola, and cello
* NY Premiere
3曲目は実験的だった。音そのものの物質性、時間、沈黙、残響。スペイン・バスク地方の作家、Ramon Lazkanoはパリ国立高等音楽院でジェラール・グリゼーやアラン・バンカールに作曲・管弦楽法を学び、さらにモントリオールでも研鑽を積み、バスク地方の音楽大学Musikeneで教えている。A Glitch at the Edgeは、誤作動・ほころび・一瞬の不具合。ラスカノは、楽器そのものの「古さ」や、演奏という行為に含まれる身体的・機械的な限界に注目しているという。
先の2曲はオーケストラが音を反復し、積み重ね演奏家は音を操作し続けた。
Lazkanoでは、音の緊張と実験的なアプローチに変化した。私たちは演奏家たちの楽器の面白さを十分に味わったあとで、どう音を出したり、どこまで音を伸ばしたり、崩れていくか、とても繊細な曲だった。フルートやホルンのロングノートが緊張を持続して、様々な断片が浮かんでは消えていった。ここまでの3曲で、聴衆の中にシカゴの現代性がどんどん蓄積されていった。
Frédéric Durieux
Theater of Shadows I, 2022*
for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, horn, harp, piano, 2 percussion, 2 violin, viola, and cello
* NY Premiere
Frédéric Durieux, 1959–は、パリ生まれで、パリ国立高等音楽院でベッツィ・ジョラスとイヴォ・マレックに学び、IRCAMで電子音楽・音楽情報処理を学んだ後、ローマのヴィラ・メディチにも滞在した。ブーレーズ、リゲティ、グリゼー、フェルネホウらの影響圏にも接し、現在はパリ音楽院で作曲を教えている。彼は、文学、演劇、現代美術から影響を受けているという。このTheater of Shadows Iでは、亡くなった画家へのオマージュとして、壁に投影された影の人物がランプの熱によって動き出したり、死者の記憶や魂が突然現れるような、夢幻的で不安定な世界を、グリッサンドや曖昧な音響、リズムによって描きながら曲が進んでいった。
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mHi0L4XBfM
Augusta Read Thomas
Solstice Ritual – Homage to Varèse and Ravel, 2024
for flute, oboe, clarinet, harp, piano, celeste, 4 percussion, 2 violin, viola, and cello
先ほどのお化けが出てきそうな曲とは変わって、Augusta Read Thomas（1964–）のこの曲は、光がプリズムの中で変化していくような、音色とエネルギーに満ちた力強く暖かな音に包まれた。彼女はニューヨーク生まれで、TanglewoodやYale大学などで学び、Oliver KnussenやJacob Druckmanらに師事した。長くシカゴ大学で教え、シカゴ交響楽団のComposer-in-Residenceも務めた。どの音色もメロディも夢に溢れて楽器の一つ一つがパワースポットのような曲だった。この曲は14人のヴィルトゥオーゾのために書かれ、Juilliard Schoolの委嘱によって作曲。打楽器が4セットあった。夏至・冬至という太陽の動きを祝う「音楽的な儀式」をイメージし、ベル、太鼓、ハープ、ピアノ、チェレスタなどの響きを中心に、光がプリズムを通って屈折するように、さまざまな音色とエネルギーが絶えず変化していく。この曲はエドガー・ヴァレーズの打楽器的な力強さと、ラヴェルの精緻な管弦楽法へのオマージュでもあり、14人の奏者にはそれぞれソロもあった。
今回のプログラムはみんな、学校で教えている先生たちだ。そして、聴いた曲は全て2020年以降に出来ているのになぜオールドスクールと感じたのか。
それは、彼らが楽器の音色、ハーモニー、旋律、リズム、アンサンブル、そして演奏家の技術という、クラシック音楽が長い時間をかけて育ててきたものを、今も強く信じているからではないか。
現代性を追求するとき、私たちは新しいものを探す。しかし、新しいものを探すことで、音そのものが持っている味わいや、楽器一つひとつの身体性を失うこともある。今回の「Old School」は、音楽の面白さを改めて現代性を通じて味わった。
Wagnerでは木琴やトライアングル、管楽器、弦楽器それぞれの音色を味わい、Shepherdでは楽器の組み合わせや反復が音楽を動かしていた。Lazkanoでは、その楽器の繊細な動きを楽しみ、Durieuxでは音色が影や記憶のようなイメージを作り、最後のAugusta Read Thomasでは、ヴァレーズとラヴェルという20世紀の二人の巨匠を通して、音色、リズム、和声、旋律そのものの豊かさを引き出していた。
だから、全員が現代の作曲家なのに「楽器の音を愛する」というつながった感覚を感じた。
そして、全員が大学などで後進を教えている。彼らは「現代音楽」を過去から切り離して作っているのではなく、自分たちが受け継いできたクラシック音楽の技術や耳を、現在の音楽へつないでいた。
これまで聴いてきたKelley SheehanやMark Andreでは、もっと根本的に「音とは何か」「楽器とは何か」「演奏とは何か」を思い知らされた。そこでは、伝統的な楽器の音色を超え、音響現象や身体、電子音響、空間などへ意識が広がっていた。
作家たちが愛する楽器があるから、彼らは曲を書きたくなるのだということを改めて思い知らされた。
Grossman Ensemble
Timothy Weiss, conductor
Constance Volk, flute
Andrew Nogal, oboe
Katherine Jimoh, clarinet
Taimur Sullivan, saxophone
Matthew Oliphant, horn
Greg Beyer, percussion
John Corkill, percussion
Kyle Flens, percussion
Christopher Jones, percussion
Ben Melsky, harp
Daniel Pesca, piano
Marianne Parker, celesta
Hanna Hurwitz, violin
Theo Ramsey, violin
Doyle Armbrust, viola
Nick Photinos, cello
Concert duration: approx. one hour and ten minutes
All works were commissioned by the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition, except Solstice Ritual – Homage to Varèse and Ravel by Augusta Read Thomas, which was commissioned by the Juilliard School.
＃OldSchoolは私の隣に座っていたギャラリストの方からいただいたインスピレーションです。