No.she047June 13, 2024
Suntory Hall Summer Festival 2024
August 22 – 29, 2024
This year’s Suntory Hall Summer Festival will take place on August 22 - 29, 2024. Presented by Suntory Hall since 1987, this annual celebration of contemporary music is seen as a major event in Tokyo’s cultural calendar.
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 programme is as follows:
1. The Producer Series: IRVINE ARDITTI
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 Irvine Arditti, violinist extraordinaire, contemporary music specialist, and founder leader of the legendary Arditti Quartet, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Over three chamber music concerts (August 22 & 25, Blue Rose), the quartet will perform no fewer than nine works dedicated to them, including premieres of new commissioned works from Hilda Paredes and Toshio Hosokawa in which they will be joined by Japanese exceptional pianist, Tomoki Kitamura. The Orchestra Concert (August 29, Main Hall), performed by Brad Lubman and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, will feature two works for String Quartet and Orchestra (Hosokawa and Philippe Manoury, who is also the Theme Composer of the Summer Festival 2024), as well as two large-scale works by Yannis Xenakis including Dox-Orkh for Violin Solo and 89 Musicians (1991) with Arditti as soloist.
2. Theme Composer: PHILIPPE MANOURY (Suntory Hall International Program for Music Composition No. 46)
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 Philippe Manoury (b.1952), who is regarded as one of the most important French composers as well as a researcher and forerunner in the field of electronics. The two concerts will showcase his diverse output from ensemble works to music featuring live electronics, and orchestral works with spatial arrangement of the musicians.
In the Orchestra Portrait concert (August 23, Main Hall), the world premiere of the commissioned work, Présences for Spatialized Large Orchestra, will be given by Brad Lubman and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra alongside works by Debussy, Boulez, and Francesca Verunelli. In the Chamber Music Portrait, four of his compositions for various instrumentations and electronics will be performed by an exciting lineup of Japanese musicians (August 27, Blue Rose). Manoury will also give a Music Composition Workshop for young composers, preceded by a Talk Session with Hosokawa and guest Ichiro Nodaira (August 26, Blue Rose).
More about the International Program for Music Composition here:
http://www.suntory.com/culture-sports/suntoryhall/global/composers/numano.html
3. The 34th Yasushi Akutagawa Suntory Award for Music Composition (August 24, Main Hall)
This award is presented to the most notable orchestral work by a Japanese composer premiered during the previous year (January-December 2023). Following the performance of the three nominated works, the jury (Tokuhide Niimi, Misato Mochizuki, and Hiroyuki Yamamoto) will conduct the deliberations on stage in public. This year, orchestral works by Kento Ishikawa, Masashi Kawashima, and Koji Yamabe are nominated, which will be performed by the New Japan Philharmonic conducted by Yoichi Sugiyama. The concert will open with the world premiere of the commissioned work, Percussion Concerto by Yuya Haryu, the winner of the 2022 award. There will also be an opportunity for the public to vote for their favourite piece.
Full listings of the Summer Festival 2024 can be found at the following:
https://www.suntory.com/culture-sports/suntoryhall/article/detail/001476.html
For further information and press photos, please contact:
suntoryhall-pr@suntory.co.jp
Public Relations, Suntory Hall
Website: http://suntory.jp/HALL-e/
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