ABOUT THE WORK When Jason Moran sent me an invitation to perform at the Park Avenue Armory I knew immediately I wanted to do it. Although, at the time I didn’t know what to perform. Last December, I finished my first solo album in eight years, async; it felt the perfect setting to premiere this music. The album contains some of the most personal music I have ever created. At first I did not want to share it with anyone else but keep it just for me. I told my label so. The first four months of making the album, I was just listening to myself and asking what was the music or sounds I wanted to hear. I arranged Bach’s choral as if it were in fog—to reveal an austere logic inside of a formless cloud. I collected the sound of things and of places — of ruins, crowds, markets, rain. One day last August, though I would not tell anybody, I decided that the concept of my new album would be “a soundtrack for an Andrei Tarkovsky film that does not exist”(who is one of my and many other creators most favorite directors). Along with other ideas, influences, and close awareness to when each track was “finished,” I knew I had to share it. Many of the sounds from my new album are not conventional instruments. For instance, I became inspired by various sound sculpture artists, such as Harry Bertoia and the Baschet Brothers, and the unique sound objects they created. There are many ways to approach playing or engaging with these works of art, and the strange resonances they produce. In a way they play themselves, offering natural randomness, which is deeply musical to me. These type of sounds, in my opinion, are best experienced in a close environment where the details can be appreciated. I am not a touring artist, yet I have toured the world performing for most of my life. I’ve lost interest in continuing to do so in the typical or conventional way. My focus or perspective towards performing has also changed over the past few years, triggered by various events both within and outside my control. Blurring the line between performance and sound installation is what interests me the most these days, which lends itself better to more modest size venues, rather than large auditoriums. This allows better control over the perfect sounds that I would like to hear, and to share with an audience. I’ve decided to chase that feeling, to the extent that I can. –Ryuichi Sakamoto
2017 ARTISTS STUDIO
IN THE NEWLY RESTORED VETERANS ROOM
Tuesday, April 25 at 7:30pm Wednesday, April 26 at 7:30pm Veterans Room, Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory
RYUICHI SAKAMOTO Ryuichi Sakamoto, Musician and Composer Shiro Takatani, Visual Artist Satoshi Hama, Artist and Programmer
SEASON SPONSORS
SERIES SPONSORS
The Artists Studio is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Altman Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Achelis and Bodman Foundation, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, The Kaplen Brothers Fund, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS As composer, performer, producer, and environmentalist, few artists have as diverse a résumé as that of Ryuichi Sakamoto. Sakamoto’s work has spanned vast musical territories, from pioneering electronic music as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra to crafting globally inspired rock albums, classical compositions, a stretch of minimal/ambient music collaborations, and over thirty film scores. His work has been recognized with accolades including an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, a Grammy, the Order of the Cavaleiro Admissão from the government of Brazil, and the coveted Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the government of France. Sakamoto has collaborated with the likes of Alva Noto, Bernardo Bertolucci, and His Holiness The Dalai Lama. Since 3/11 in Japan, Sakamoto has been a strong advocate of support and aid for the victims of the earthquake, tsunami, and anthropogenic nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, launching charity organizations and the music event, NO NUKES. In responding to the consumerism of the 21st century, his politically conscious dynamism has cemented his reputation as a renaissance man. In 2014, Sakamoto was forced to take the first major break of his career upon his diagnosis with throat cancer. Thanks to rest, friends, family, and fans were able to witness his return in just over a year, and he closed 2015 with two film scores: a collaborative score with Alva Noto for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Academy Award-winning The Revenant, and Yoji Yamada’s Nagasaki: Memories Of My Son. In 2017 Sakamoto released his 16th solo album, async, his most personal album to date.
Satoshi Hama makes installations, and music and performance pieces, both as original work, as well as supporting various artists, that utilize various media via computer programming. Recent support for artists includes: Fog London at Tate Modern (Fujiko Nakaya, Shiro Takatani, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, 2017), Les âmes qui murmurent (Christian Boltanski, 2016), Plankton, A Drifting World at the Origin of Life (Christian Sardet, Shiro Takatani, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, 2016), micro | macro (Ryoji Ikeda at ZKM, 2015), Sanbaso/Eclipse - Mansai/Boléro (Mansai Nomura and Shiro Takatani, 2014), Sensing Streams (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Daito Manabe, 2014), supersymmetry (Ryoji Ikeda, 2013), water state 1 (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Shiro Takatani, 2013), LIFE - WELL (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Shiro Takatani, 2013), and Forest Symphony (Ryuichi Sakamoto, YCAM Interlab, 2013). His solo exhibitions include: sound mind sound body (2014), Casi Rien (2012), Gunma Biennale for Young Artists (2012), Hiroshima.O (2012), and Kiyoshi Awazu Retrospective: ReReproduction 2009. Shiro Takatani has been a founding member of the artist collective Dumb Type since 1984. Takatani has produced numerous performances and installation pieces using a variety of media, and continues to show work in theaters and museums around the world. Aside from Dumb Type, Takatani began a parallel solo career in 1998. In his solo activities he created his own performance La Chambre Claire (premiered at Theater der Welt, Germany in 2008), and CHROMA (premiered at Biwako Hall Center for the Performing Arts Shiga in 2012). His first retrospective solo exhibition, Camera Lucida, was held at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in 2013. His latest performance, ST/LL (premiered at Le Volcan, France in 2015), along with music by Ryuichi Sakamoto will be presented at New National Theatre Tokyo in February 2018. Production Acknowledgements Jim Toth, Audio Engineer Kinetic Art & Business America, Inc. Norika Sora and Alec Fellman, Studio Management
ABOUT THE ARTISTS STUDIO With its exquisite melding of styles and mediums evident in the creative collaboration of Louis C. Tiffany and Associated Artists in the new Aesthetic Movement style, the Veterans Room represents the exuberance and innovation of exceptional young artisans approaching the decorative arts with a new vision. This season, the series adds a new voice to the eclectic styles found in the space, with performances by a diverse mix of musicians, composers, and artists that infuse their own work with a multitude of various references and source material, from Japan, India, and West Africa to the American South and Harlem. Curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Jason Moran, these interventions explore the culture of sound that can be visibly seen in the newly reopened space, while allowing these creative thinkers to actively explore bold new directions of global influence in contemporary music. UPCOMING EVENTS:
Lawrence Brownlee with Myra Huang & Jason Moran August 7 & 9 Rashaad Newsome November 7
ABOUT THE VETERANS ROOM The Veterans Room is among the most significant surviving interiors of the American Aesthetic Movement, and the most significant remaining intact interior in the world by Louis C. Tiffany and Co., Associated Artists. This newly formed collective led by Tiffany included some of the most significant American designers of the 19th century at early stages of their very distinguished careers: Stanford White, Samuel Colman, and Candace Wheeler among them. The design of the room by these artisans was exotic, eclectic, and full of experimentation, as noted by Decorator and Furnisher in 1885 that “the prepondering styles appear to be the Greek, Moresque and Celtic, with a dash of Egyptian, the Persian and the Japanese in the appropriate places.” A monument of late 19th-century decorative arts, the Veterans Room is the fourth period room at the Armory completed (out of 18). The revitalization of the room responds to the original exuberant vision for the room’s design, bringing into dialogue some of the most talented designers of the 19th and 21st centuries – Associated Artists with Herzog & de Meuron, Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, and a team of world-renowned artisans and experts in Tiffany glass, fine woodworking, and decorative arts.
The revitalization of the Veterans Room follows Herzog & de Meuron’s design approach for the Armory building, which seeks to highlight the distinct qualities and existing character of each individual room while interweaving contemporary elements to improve its function. Even more so than in other rooms at the Armory, Herzog & de Meuron’s approach to the Veterans Room is to amplify the beauty of the room’s original vision through adding contemporary reconstructions of lost historic material and subtle additions with the same ethos and creative passion as the original artisans to infuse a modern energy into a harmonious, holistic design. The room’s restoration is part of an ongoing $210-million transformation, which is guided by the understanding that the Armory’s rich history and the patina of time are essential to its character, with a design process for the period rooms that emphasizes close collaboration between architect and artisan.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________ The restoration and renovation of the Veterans Room was made possible by The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc., Susan and Elihu Rose, Charina Endowment Fund, Lisa and Sanford B. Ehrenkranz, Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Assemblymember Dan Quart and the New York State Assembly, Liz and Emanuel Stern, Olivia and Adam Flatto, Kenneth S. Kuchin, R. Mark and Wendy Adams, American Express, Rebecca Robertson and Byron Knief, Amy and Jeffrey Silverman, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Anonymous (2). Cover photo: James Ewing