No.she037June 22, 2023

Suntory Hall Summer Festival 2023
August 23 - 28, 2023

This year’s Suntory Hall Summer Festival will take place on August 23-28, 2023. Presented by Suntory Hall since 1987, this celebration of contemporary music has become a familiar event in Tokyo’s summer music scene.
Every August, leading musicians in the field from both Japan and abroad gather in Tokyo to present the cutting-edge music of our age. The Summer Festival is formed of three different strands: (1) “The Producer Series”, (2) “Theme Composer” as part of the “Suntory Hall International Program for Music Composition” (Artistic Director: Toshio Hosokawa), and (3) “Yasushi Akutagawa Suntory Award for Music Composition”, an award given to the most outstanding work premiered in Japan in the previous year.
This year’s program is as follows:

1. The Producer Series: MASAHIRO MIWA
In this series, each year a different artist/ensemble is invited to curate a series of concerts from his/her/their unique point of view. This year’s producer is the Japanese composer Masahiro Miwa, winner of the Suntory Music Award in 2020, and known for his diverse output including works based on the method known as algorithmic composition. He has long been fascinated by gamelan music of Indonesia, and for this festival, he has devised two events through which he explores the universe of gamelan. “En-gawa”* (August 25 - 27, Blue Rose) is a series of events produced in collaboration with Art Collective KITA and gamelan group Marga Sari; an imaginary street corner of Indonesia is set up in the Blue Rose where people can stroll around and experience various music/dance performances that will pop up.
Meanwhile, the concert “Music in the Universe” (August 27, Main Hall) will feature José Maceda’s Music for Gongs and Bamboo, as well as world premiere of works for gamelan ensemble by Noriko Koide, Mamoru Fujieda, Makoto Nomura, and Yasuno Miyauchi.
*En-gawa is a type of veranda in a Japanese traditional house, a space that connects the inside and the outside worlds.

2. Theme Composer: OLGA NEUWIRTH (Suntory Hall International Program for Music Composition No. 45)
The Theme Composer series presents a portrait of a leading international composer, and commissions him/her a new orchestral work that is premiered during the festival. This year’s theme composer is the celebrated Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth (b. 1968), whose opera Orlando, premiered at the Vienna State Opera in 2019, was the first house commission from a female composer. She is internationally known for the versatility of her musical statements that pushes boundaries in a wide range of forms and genres. She has won numerous awards including the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Composition in 2022.
In the Orchestra Portrait concert (August 24, Main Hall), the commissioned work Orlando’s World, based on her opera, will be premiered by her close colleague Matthias Pintscher (who himself was the Theme Composer in 2021) and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra with mezzo soprano Virpi Räisänen. The program also includes Neuwirth’s Masaot / Clocks without Hands. In the Chamber Music Portrait, five of her compositions for various instrumentations will be performed by an exciting lineup of Japanese musicians (August 28, Blue Rose). She will also give a Music Composition Workshop with young composers preceded by a talk session with Toshio Hosokawa (August 23, Blue Rose).
More about the International Program for Music Composition here:
https://www.suntory.com/culture-sports/suntoryhall/global/composers/numano.html

3. The 33rd Competition of Yasushi Akutagawa Suntory Award for Music Composition
(August 26, Main Hall)
This award is presented to the most notable orchestral work by a Japanese composer premiered during the previous year (January - December 2022). Following the performance of the three nominated works, the jury (Yasutaki Inamori, Kunitaka Kokaji, and Yukiko Watanabe) will conduct the deliberations on stage in public. This year, orchestral works by Hiroki Tanaka, Junichi Matsumoto, and Wataru Mukai are nominated, which will be performed by the New Japan Philharmonic conducted by Seitaro Ishikawa. There will also be an opportunity for the public to vote for their favorite piece. The concert will open with the world premiere of the commissioned work Falling Leaves Moon Steps (for shakuhachi, shamisen, and orchestra) by Yu Kuwabara, the winner of the 2021 award.

Full listings of the Summer Festival 2023 can be found at the following:
https://www.suntory.com/culture-sports/suntoryhall/article/detail/001178.html

For further information and press photos, please contact:
suntoryhall-pr@suntory.co.jp
Public Relations, Suntory Hall

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