Inward Journey by Philip Ellis Foster

Kentaro Ogasawara September 10, 2025

Although the sound directions are random, each line of notes continues at regular intervals. Each line repeats small crescendos and decrescendos, and while composed of limited elements, the notes are placed with high precision yet randomly. Double stops make me perceive two distinct characters, and the harmonics follow a consistent pattern. As these sound lines pass through, the combination of scattered notes and the regularity of the harmonics prevents any sense of déjà vu in thought, dissolving tension and expectation, and creating a natural space and quiet openness in the mind. This is healing for the heart and discipline for the mind that cleans up my brain trash.

Performed by the JACK Quartet on December 19, 2024 in New York at the Mannes School of Music at The New School as part of the 2024 JACK Studio Readings.

音の方向はばらばらでありながら、それぞれの音のラインは一定の間隔で続く。各ラインは小さなクレッシェンドとデクレッシェンドを繰り返し、要素は少ないが、音は高い精度で、かつランダムに配置されている。ダブルストップをかけると、音から二つの異なるキャラクターを同時に感じることができ、ハーモニクスには一定のパターンが存在する。こうした音のラインが自分の中を通り過ぎると、ばらばらに置かれた音と規則的なハーモニクスの組み合わせによって思考に既視感は生まれず、緊張や期待が解け、心に自然な余白と静かな開放感が生まれる。それはまるで脳にたまったごみを取り除いてくれるような感覚。この方の近くにいると気配に圧倒される。気取りがなくユーモアに溢れ、しかしとても厳しい目で、温かく作品を眺めたり楽しんだりしている。

"Inward Journey" by Philip Ellis Foster, performed by the JACK Quartet

Recommended work : C-A-G-E-D

The house of contemporary, Yarn/Wire’s Bushwick studio.

Kentaro Ogasawara September 9, 2025

On the way there, Mäkelä’s Berlioz is playing in my head. Yarn/Wire’s studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where they've been fifteenth year. The program began with Igor Santos’s living to fall [music and rain]. As fragments of video unfolded alongside live sound, the consciousness of the four performers made the images—rain, shattering glass—appear vividly.

LIVE FROM TROUTMAN Yarn/Wire, Sarah Davachi, Igor Santos

Kentaro Ogasawara September 7, 2025

The latest works by Canadian composers Sarah Davachi and Igor Santos at Yarn/Wire’s studio in New York. Davachi’s Feedback Studies for Percussion (2022) creates a meditative soundscape using percussion and feedback, minimizing melody and rhythm while exploring resonance and overtones. Performers do more than follow the score, shaping sound in response to the acoustics, immersing listeners in the subtle shifts and flow of time. Santos’ living to fall [music and rain] (2022) blends sound and visual media around the theme of water, employing piano, keyboards, percussion, and visuals to evoke thunder and rain, symbolizing both violence and healing. Yarn/Wire delivers precise and expressive performances of both works, offering a profound encounter with the possibilities.

TIME:SPANS 2025

Kentaro Ogasawara August 30, 2025

Attended four concerts at the 2025 TIME:SPANS Contemporary Music Festival in NYC, featuring Ensemble Nikel, Christopher Trapani, Bekah Simms, and more, showcased cutting-edge sound art and offered a glimpse of the present and future of global contemporary music.

From the left, Lori Freedman (Bass Clarinet), Gabriel Dufour-Laperrière (Sound Engineer), Geneviève Liboiron (Violin), Daniel Aniez García (Piano), Steven Kazuo Takasugi (Musical Direction), Sarah Albu (Soprano), Huei Lin (Video Artist), Emilie Girard-Charest (Cello), Noam Bierstone (Percussion, and production leader), Jeff D’Ambrosio (Lighting), and Felix Del Tredici (Bass Trombone) TIME:SPANS 2025

Il Teatro Rosso - 赤い劇場

Kentaro Ogasawara August 26, 2025

Montreal's Red Theater merges poetry, sound, video, and performance into a total artwork. Takasugi and Huei Lin’s score, performed by seven vaudevillians, blends chaotic microtones with vivid visuals, dissolving illusions and evoking infinity. At Time: Spans 2025, the ensemble, led by Noam Bierstone, revealed mastery over time, space, and perception.

ekmeles: Stockhausen's Stimmung

Kentaro Ogasawara February 17, 2025

The vocal group ekmeles performed Stockhausen’s Stimmung at St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, on Feb 14. Over 70 minutes, six singers explored 51 models, layering hums, whispers, and chants of gods’ names to create elusive overtone fusions. The piece, written in 1968, evokes calming, ever-changing vitality, inspired by Stockhausen’s son’s crib hums, medieval church singing, and his time among Mexican ruins.

Michael Gordon(Right), Paul Hillier(left next), and Theater of Voices

Theatre of Voices at Carnegie Hall

Kentaro Ogasawara February 11, 2025

Founded in 1990 by Paul Hillier, Theater of Voices performed at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall. Their uniform, refined, and expressive singing highlighted each piece’s unique character, freeing listeners from familiar musical patterns. Michael Gordon’s A Western, John Luther Adams’ A Brief Descent into Deep Time, and Julia Wolfe’s Italian Lesson were on the program.

After Versus, Patrick Higgins palaced his guiter on the middle of the stage. R.I,P David Lynch 1.16.2025

Patrick Higgins / Sound Planetarium

Kentaro Ogasawara January 15, 2025

On a snowy January evening in Brooklyn, Higgins performed his latest work, improvising on electric guitar over electronic, drum, and brass sounds. The 40-minute soundscape shimmered like a twinkling planetarium, blending rough lyricism, nostalgia, and innovation into a vivid, expressive universe from a single guitar.

Yarn/Wire: Challenge to Difference

Kentaro Ogasawara October 31, 2024

Vivaldi’s Spring experiments with harmony and ingenuity; Yarn/Wire challenges differences using various tools, even everyday objects. In AUDITORY SCENES, two performers applied electric massagers to a large drum, creating a sensation never experienced before. No familiar melodies, yet the tools connect to everyday life, opening minds like the flow of the Ganges. First-time viewers encounter a test of harmony and ideas, breaking mental shells and expanding perception—a refreshing experience before the busy concert season.

At Pioneer Works, Earl Howard and ICE, The opening venue since 2016

Inspired Inspiration in Brooklyn

Kentaro Ogasawara September 8, 2024

The blind man, barefoot, enjoyed musical sparks with ten musicians. At Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, he and the ICE members engaged in a sonic conversation that seemed to awaken memories and imagination. In Rick’s piece, words transformed into sound, vividly emerging in the space. This new musical experience, rooted in everyday life, offers those of us living today a sense of guidance toward the future.

Thomas Fichter, the festival’s executive and artistic director.　Saturday, August 24, 2024 at Mary Flagler Cary Hall, DiMenna Center for Classical Music

Time Spans: Life of Music 音楽の命ニューヨーク現代音楽フェス

Kentaro Ogasawara August 27, 2024

Yarn/Wire performed Olga Neuwirth’s Black Dwarf (2023) and works by Peter Eötvös at the Timespans 21st Century Music Festival in New York on August 23. Curator Thomas Fichter emphasizes giving new works sufficient rehearsal time so they can develop a “life of their own,” allowing each audience member to connect uniquely through experience. The music’s seeds transcend time and senses. Next year, the program will tour Montreal, Hesse, and Darmstadt.

Klaus Lang: Space Paradox

Kentaro Ogasawara August 19, 2024

At a New York studio, four string instruments carried me on a journey through time, their sounds clear and unclouded by audience noise. Lang invited us to experience the beauty of sound itself, and the repeated notes evoked vivid memories of steppes, winter winds, and morning mist with swans. Though the sounds traveled, they returned to their origin, and when the concert ended, even everyday noises seemed musical—until morning, when the world returned to normal.

Stockhausen: The ultimate world of space walking

Kentaro Ogasawara August 1, 2024

As if thrown into space

The ultimate world of space walking

まるで宇宙に放り出されたような感覚。究極の宇宙遊泳世界を是非ご堪能下さい。

In the Crypt Session

Kentaro Ogasawara December 10, 2023

On a December Friday night in a Manhattan church basement, Andrew Ousley curated The Crypt Session, an intimate concert for 40–50 attendees. The program included David Lang’s Four Voces and Minimized Effective Instruments and The Little Match Girl Passion. Every detail of the performance, from the acoustics of the curved stone space to the musicians’ preparation, created a deeply immersive experience, connecting centuries of Western musical development and delivering an unparalleled, profoundly moving sound.

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