"Harmonize"
an anthology project
- 四季 -
The Shiki Percussion duo was formed in 2015 by Ayami Okamura and Dan deSimone. Since their debut, the duo has been comitted to working with living composers around the world and expanding the repertoire with new possibilites and arrangements for percussion duo inspired by Jazz, Electronic, Film/Video Game, Avant Garde and Classical written music.
Harmonize project
In the spring of 2021, Shiki Percussion duo began contacting composers from around the globe for the start of a new anthology project aimed at a more multicultural expression of the present classical duo repertoire. This anthology will include these new publications as well as a debut of the composers' works in a tour of several cities in Europe in 2022.
Meet the
Composers
UPDATE: As of the Winter 2023, the Harmonize project is joined by composers Yaroslava Snitko and Hristina Susak! More information to be updated soon!
Tzu-Chin Hsu
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Composer Tzu-Chin Hsu draws her musical ideas from nature, social interaction, and from the traditional culture of her home country, Taiwan. Tzu-Chin’s works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded by leading ensembles such as the BBC Singers, HANATSUmiroir, Butler opera center, Quince ensemble, ensemble Soundinitiative, Taipei Chinese Orchestra, and the Taipei Symphony Orchestra amongst others. Her latest songs written for Soprano Ellain Lin and piano using Taiwanese dialect will be premiered in Carnegie Hall in July 2022. Tzu-Chin’s music has won numerous awards and honors including the first prize at the Lisker Music Foundation 2019 Composition Challenge, second prize at the Virginia Carty DeLillo Composition Competition, second prize in the Taiwan National Music Competition, and the first prize in the Taipei Music Competition. She graduated from Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music at the National University of Singapore and Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. Tzu-Chin is currently pursuing her DMA at the University of Texas at Austin, living with her cat Mochi.
Composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen has written a wide range of music encompassing symphonic work, opera, chamber music and vocal music. According to The New York Times his “delicately made music - airy, spacious, terribly complex but never convoluted - has a lot to teach the Western wizards of metric modulation and layered rhythms about grace and balance.” Performers around the world have performed his music including the Minnesota Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau, Vancouver Opera Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Kwa Zulu-Natal Philharmonic, Johannesburg Festival Orchestra, Johannesburg Philharmonic, Cape Town Philharmonic, New York City’s Vox Vocal Ensemble, New Julliard Ensemble, Juventas Ensemble, Continuum Contemporary Music Toronto, Chicago’s Cube Ensemble, Avalon String Quartet and Ossia. Ndodana-Breen has received commissions from Wigmore Hall, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Vancouver Recital Society, Madam Walker Theatre Indianapolis, SAMRO, University of South Africa, Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival, Cape Town Opera, the Emancipation Festival of Trinidad & Tobago, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Luminato Festival Toronto, Haydn Festspiele Eisenstadt (Haydn 200th anniversary), Classical Movements and the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival. He is the composer of Winnie, The Opera based on the life of Mrs Winnie Mandela, which premiered to great acclaim at the State Theatre in Pretoria. On this opera Die Beeld wrote: “Ndodana-Breen is a composer of stature. This is confirmed by the outstanding portraiture of Winnie.” Music scholar Naomi Andre devotes a chapter in Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement on his opera. Ndodana-Breen’s Harmonia Ubuntu, commissioned for the Centenary of Nelson Mandela, was premiered in 2018 by the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vanska in Minneapolis and on their historic tour to South Africa. The project led to a profile of Ndodana-Breen on CNN’s African Voices. Other works by Ndodana-Breen include Three Orchestral Songs on Poems of Ingrid Jonker, commissioned for The Cape Town Philharmonic to mark the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death; Ma Sisulu Sinfonia, commissioned by the Johannesburg Philharmonic led by Bill Eddins; Hani, a short opera on anti-apartheid activist Chris Hani; and an oratorio, Credo, based on South Africa’s Freedom Charter commissioned by UNISA. Recordings of Ndodana-Breen’s music are available on Naxos’ Capriccio label and MSR Classics. Ndodana-Breen graduated with a Ph.D. (Music Composition) from Rhodes University and was a 2019/2020 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. He was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music and selected as one of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans. He was Director of the Canadian new music organization Ensemble Noir from 1999 - 2007 touring to Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. According to Canada’s The Globe and Mail “He seems to be just as interested in giving pleasure as in opening people’s minds… which makes him doubly a novelty on the Toronto New Music scene” (Globe and Mail, Nov 2001).
Bongani Ndodana-Breen
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Taylor Ambrosio Wood
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Taylor Ambrosio Wood started her music career when she was 9 years old playing the Zimbabwean marimba and mbira (a traditional Shona thumb piano). She continued to pursue her passion for music by studying percussion and composition at The Boston Conservatory of Music. Taylor then completed her M.M. in Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games at The Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain, at age 22, and recorded her thesis at AIR Studios in London. Taylor has worked as an arranger and orchestrator for various film and video game projects, including A R Rahman Live, and composed tracks for the cult smash-hit game, Yandere Simulator. Most recently, she produced The Last of Us Remixed, as well as composed soundtracks for The Window Box and Balthazar’s Dream. You can also find her music featured in The Believer magazine’s collection of progressive and avant-garde music from indie video games, 2010-2018.