Curated by flutist Sasha Ishov, Echoes and Influences is an evening of solos and duos featuring music by Joji Yuasa, alongside works by Isang Yun and Jo Kondō — figures in the postwar Japanese and Korean avant-garde whose works reflect distinct yet interwoven aesthetic trajectories.

Performed by a collective of Chicago-based and guest artists:
Sasha Ishov, flute
Michael Jones, percussion
Shaoai Ashley Zhang, piano
Zachary Good, clarinet

PROGRAM

Reigaku (in Memory of Isang Yun) for Solo Alto Flute (1997)
Joji Yuasa (1929-2024)

Interludium A for Solo Piano (1982)
Isang Yun (1917-1995)

Clarinet Solitude (1983)
Joji Yuasa

Twayn for Flute and Percussion (2002)
Jo Kondō (b. 1947)

Salomo for Solo Alto Flute (1977/78)
Isang Yun

PROGRAM NOTES

Joji Yuasa (1929-2023) was a founding member of experimental collective Jikken Kōbō (alongside Tōru Takemitsu) in 1950s Tokyo. Over his career (including a period teaching at UC San Diego from 1981-1994), he cultivated “omnivorous stylistic proclivities [embracing] impressionism and romanticism as well as high modernism,” as well as composing for traditional Japanese instruments (source). In solo works like Reigaku (In Memory of Isang Yun) for alto flute and Clarinet Solitude, Yuasa synthesizes Japanese court music aesthetics with European modernist techniques in an exploration of timbre and form.

Isang Yun (1917-1995), often described as a “Korean-born German composer” also embodied a fusion of influences. Yun stated, “I was born in Korea and project that culture, but I developed musically in Europe. I don’t need to organize or separate elements of the cultures. I am a unity, a simple person” (source). Yun’s music merges his philosophical and cultural background with techniques absorbed from the Western avant-garde (including a personal adaptation of serialism). His “Hauptton” technique—centering pieces around a single sustained main tone that is delicately inflected and ornamented—illustrates his focus on timbral inflections as an expressive force. Interludium A for piano and Salomo for alto flute both demonstrate this synthesis of influences.

Jō Kondo (b. 1947) represents the next generation of East Asian composers influenced by the Euro-American avant-garde. Inspired by John Cage’s call to honor “sounds in themselves” as well as Morton Feldman’s approach to musical form, Kondo developed his concept of “negative music,” and a conception of sound as a “shared object of listening.” Related to this is his idea of “linear music,” composing one note at a time without preordained structure, so that each tone follows from the last. The result is music that Kondo says may appear “artlessly” simple, yet concealing intricate sophistication beneath (source). In Twayn a duo for flute and percussion, Kondō explores these principles through a constant stream of resonant events, drawn into the subtle play of timbre, texture, and silence.

Together, the works on Echoes and Influences illuminate a complex musical dialogue across eras and cultures. Each composer’s individual voice is shaped by and in conversation with a larger musical world that projects its cultural assumptions and expectations shaping the resulting musical experience.