Daryl Jamieson ‘utamakura 2: Arnardalur’ (2018) for violin, piano, and fixed audiovisual fixed media

Описание: Performed by Hideki Ōba, violin; Satoko Inoue, piano

Programme Note:
utamakura are place names used in Japanese poetry since it was first written down in the early 8th century. These places were memorialised because of some spiritual significance or a great event being connected to that place. The places which resonated with poets generally were repeated down the centuries, a web of intertextual allusions building up around each placename as generations of poets, composers, and playwrights reused the same placenames in their works.

In this series of utamakura pieces, I will go to these storied places in Japan and abroad, make field recordings there, and create works around these recordings which interrogate the associations these places have accrued, the meaning for us today of old tales for our sense of place and our sense of time, as well as the spiritual chasm which widens in the face of idealised evocations of a place and its often-disappointing reality.

‘utamakura 2: Arnardalur’ is based on scenes from the mediaeval Icelandic saga ‘Fóstbræðra Saga’. In a saga largely about heroic (violent) deeds and poetic recounting of battle, the early interlude in Arnardalur is more romantic in nature. The Skaldic (poet) hero, having arrived in the valley of Arnardalur in the northwest of Iceland from the nearby town of Bolungarvík, seduces a local beauty with the power of his poetry.


"Feldman meets freq"
Date: 18-20 February 2022
Venue: Kyushu University, Faculty of Design, Acoustic Research Centre

In partnership with freq, an event that has been exploring the sounds produced by media technology for the past twenty years, ‘Feldman meets freq’ introduced the profound influence of composer Morton Feldman and American experimental music on contemporary and electronic music in Japan, particularly among Fukuoka-based composers and performers. Hear beautiful patterns, the complex yet quiet and profound music of Feldman, his colleagues, his students, and his admirers, performed by the best contemporary and electronic musicians from Fukuoka and Japan.


We acknowledge the financial support of the Asahi Group Arts Foundation, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science’s Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (19K21615).