For the Love of the Music

MICHAEL SCHELLE AND MIHO SASAKI ____

Words by Nicholas Johnson, Ph.D. • Photos by Esther Boston

If you met local avant-garde composers Miho Sasaki and Michael Schelle on the street, you might not guess they are married. Sasaki jokes about their generational and cultural differences. “We have nothing in common except music, cats and Indian buffets,” she says. “Most importantly, we love tiny little things together in daily life. It’s all we need, and nothing else.” Sasaki and Schelle were married in 2008 in the United States, and again in a Shinto ceremony in Japan in 2012. Both had long been composers, but their marriage has given them new inspiration. They brag on each other as the source of motivation, work-ethic and passion for new music. “We do what’s right for us, not jumping on bandwagons, or what’s going to make us more money, or what’s politically correct, or what the audience wants to hear,” says Schelle, a professor of music at Butler University. “Nobody needed The Rite of Spring until it was written. Now everybody needs it.” Sasaki credits Schelle’s wind ensemble Guttersnipe (1994) with changing her life by opening new musical possibilities and means of expression. Likewise, Schelle admits that it was Sasaki’s brilliant

piano playing of Beethoven, Chopin and Brahms that made him reconsider past musical styles and elements. Both composers, however, are committed to the avant-garde and their own musical visions. Schelle is concerned that audiences today are treated too cautiously. Instead, he wishes orchestras and chamber groups would embrace newer musical ideas that might better communicate the emotions of living in the modern world. He is sympathetic to the fundraising needs of performing organizations—within certain limits. “Bernstein said 50 years ago that most orchestras are museums, and the conductor is the curator,” Schelle says. A lack of mainstream attention does not discourage either composer’s compositional goals. Schelle points to a negative review when the Detroit Symphony performed one of his pieces. The reviewer hated it so much that he said so numerous times throughout the review. Schelle saw it as a victory. “He’s never going to forget me, so I succeeded.” Sasaki shares his attitude. “We have to be true to our hearts,” she says. Whether their work is loved or not, they are unfazed. Judging from the numerous regional, national and international performances of their respective compositions, the Schelle/Sasaki joint inspiration seems to be working. Schelle’s one-act opera The End of Al Capone (2014) will receive its Eastern European premiere in Warsaw, Poland in May 2019. For her part, Sasaki has had pieces performed in New York, Texas, Mississippi, Washington, Japan and Córdoba, Argentina in the last year alone. Locally, there are several opportunities to hear their music. On March 19, 2019 at the Eidson-Duckwell Recital Hall at Butler University, Hell’s Kitchen-based guest artist Thomas Piercy (clarinet) will perform several of their pieces as part of his 12-year U.S./Japan touring concert series titled Tokyo to New York. Sasaki’s The Soul of Lights Freeze (2017), a piece premiered by Piercy in New York City last fall, will be on the program. Written after the death of her father, Sasaki’s work uses floating colors and small idiomatic gestures that attempt to capture the emotions of processing his death.

At the same concert, Schelle’s Chords That Rhyme with Your Eyes (2017) and Godzilla Brillante (1997) will be performed. Schelle says the Godzilla piece was written shortly after he rediscovered post-bop experimental jazz, and he wanted to explore different musical fusion possibilities. Combined with his lifelong fascination for all things Japanese, the work is meant to depict Godzilla stomping around the globe, destroying musical styles of all types.

Another opportunity to hear Sasaki’s music will be in Fort Wayne on March 10, when the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Youth Orchestra performs her Ryuki: The Earth is Alive. This piece was written in remembrance of the Japanese tsunami of 2011. It uses musical storytelling to bring the work alive with moments of tonality, impressionism and even “dissonance for the kids.” ■

Explore the works of these fantastic local composers at their artist sites, sasakimusic.com and schellemusic.com.