TOKYO –
Avant-garde pianist and composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, who studied with John Cage and led Japan’s advances in modern experimental music, has died. He was 89.
Ichiyanagi, who was married to Yoko Ono before she married John Lennon, died on Friday, according to the Kanagawa Arts Foundation, where Ichiyanagi had served as general artistic director. The cause of death was not given.
“We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all those who loved him during his life,” the foundation’s president, Kazumi Tamamura, said in a statement on Saturday.
Ichiyanagi studied at The Juilliard School in New York and emerged as a pioneer, using free-spirited compositional techniques that left much to chance, incorporating not only traditional Japanese elements and instruments, but also electronic music.
He was known for collaborations that pushed the boundaries of genres, working with Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham, as well as innovative Japanese artists such as architect Kisho Kurokawa and poet and playwright Shuji Terayama, as well as Ono, to whom he was married for several years. years. years beginning in the mid-1950s.
“In my creation, I have been trying to let various elements, which have often been considered separately as contrasts and opposites in music, coexist and penetrate each other,” Ichiyanagi once said in an artist statement.
Traditional Japanese music inspired and encouraged him, he said, because he wasn’t concerned with the usual definitions of music as “temporary art” or what he called “divisions,” such as relative and absolute, or new and old.
Modern music is more about “substantial space, to restore the spiritual richness that music provides,” he said.
Among his well-known works for orchestra is his turbulently provocative “Berlin Renshi”. Renshi is a type of Japanese collaborative poetry that is more open free verse than older forms like “renku”.
In 1989, Ichiyanagi formed the Tokyo International Music Ensemble – The New Tradition (TIME), an orchestral group focused on traditional instruments and “shomyo,” a style of Buddhist singing.
His music traveled freely across influences and cultures, transitioning seamlessly from minimalist avant-garde to Western opera.
Ichiyanagi toured the world, premiering his compositions at Carnegie Hall in New York and the Theater des Champs-Elysees in Paris. The National Theater of Japan also commissioned several works from him.
He remained prolific over the years, producing the Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra in 2013 and the Piano Concerto No. 6 in 2016, which Ichiyanagi performed solo at a Tokyo festival.
Ichiyanagi received numerous awards, including the Alexander Gretchaninov Award from Juilliard, L’ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Republic, and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, and the Purple Ribbon Medal from the Japanese government.
Born in Kobe into a family of musicians, Ichiyanagi showed promise as a composer at a young age. He won a major competition in Japan before moving to the US as a teenager, when such moves were still relatively rare in post-war Japan.
A private funeral is taking place with the family. A public ceremony in his honor, organized by his son, is being prepared, Japanese media reported.
Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama