A Special World of

TOMIHIRO HOSHINO

Watercolor Exhibition of deeply moving poems and superbly wrought flower paintings

Shumei Hall Gallery (MAP)

October, 2008 - January, 2009

Free Admission

Inspired by nature’s simple truths, Tomohiro’s images and verse give a rare insight into the depths of misery he faced and eventually overcame when in 1970, at the age of 24, the artist was left paralyzed from the neck down. His work also allows a glimpse of the heights the human spirit can scale. Holding a brush in his mouth, each stroke on paper brims with hope, courage, and an earnest joy of living. His art is a profound gift to all of us.

 

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Toru Takemitsu Festival

April 25th and 26th

2009

Shumei Hall & Shumei Hall Gallery
Celebrating the 10th Anniversary Season of the Shumei Arts Council of America

Confronting Silence:
Music of Takemitsu and the Environment

 

Program
Saturday, April 25, 2009

Symposium, Calligraphy demonstration by Alex Kerr, Japanese Tea ceremony and Music presentation

 

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Viewing documentary film and Concert performed by Southwest Chamber Music

Background

During the tenth anniversary season of the Shumei Arts Council of America, the Council will present concerts, a symposium, and other activities celebrating the life and work of the composer Toru Takemitsu. The festival will be held on Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26, 2009.

Toru Takemitsu (1930—1996) is considered one of the major composers of the later 20th Century. His talents and interests were broad. He drew inspiration from a range of sources that included jazz, popular song, the European avant-garde, and traditional Japanese music. He wrote concert music and music for films, among them a number of cinematic classics. He was a figure of universal sensibilities, and the first Japanese composer to find international acclaim. He also was a popular celebrity in Japan and a well-received writer on aesthetics and musical theory in both Japanese and English. He was an advocate for world peace, and even managed to write a detective novel.

Nature, Spirituality, and ‘Ma.’

The concept of ‘ma’ was incorporated in Takemitsu’s mature works, those composed while rediscovering the music of his native Japan. Ma is sometimes defined as an open space, a breath, a pause, or a silence defined by sound and found between sounds.

There is a spatial aspect to the idea of ma. It can be experienced in the environs of a formal Japanese garden. Takemitsu often compared composing and listening to music to walking through a garden. He thought of instruments as similar to a garden’s various rocks, plants, and artifacts that together form a harmonious whole where no one part overpowers the rest. There is a spiritual element to ma as well. The vacant space defined by these elements is rich ground for meditation, and silence is the home of spirituality. Ma connects us to both the universe of the five senses and the unseen world beyond them. For Takemitsu, ma permeated the natural world, and nature was his great teacher. Ma touches the heart of nature, a sense of nature almost lost to modern society. Many of Takemitsu’s pieces evoke themes of the natural world.

The concerts will present ma and nature as found in Takemitsu’s work. Takemitsu believed that spirits exist everywhere in nature, and each of his works was an expression of his love of nature.

The symposium will explore the wonder that ma in nature inspires, and how this awe is the birthplace of art, spirituality, and science as exemplified by environmental concerns and a commitment to a peaceful world.

Purpose

Through the Takemitsu festival, the Shumei Arts Council hopes to foster an understanding and appreciation of the role of art and spirituality in the health of our natural world, and the well-being and happiness of all people.