COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE
SOMEI SATOH

Somei Satoh was born in 1947 in Sendai, the primary Tsunami affected region in northern Honshu, and began teaching himself western music and exploring experimental music at the age of eighteen. Since the late 1960s, he has presented several multimedia works. In 1972 he produced “Global Vision,” a multimedia arts festival, that encompassed musical events, works by visual artists and improvisational performance groups. In one of his most interesting projects held at a hot springs resort in Tochigi Prefecture in 1981, Satoh places eight speakers approximately one kilometer apart on mountain tops overlooking a huge valley. As a man-made fog rose from below, the music from the speakers combined with laser beams and moved the clouds into various formations. Satoh has collaborated twice since 1985 with theater designer, Manuel Luetgenhorst in dramatic stagings of his music at The Arts at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn, New York. Satoh was awarded the Japan Arts Festival prize in 1980 and received a visiting artist grant from the Asian Cultural Council in 1983, enabling him to spend one year in the United States.  Satoh’s works have been widely performed in the USA, in European countries, and in many countries in the Pacific basin, and Satoh is acknowledged to be one of the best-known Japanese composers in the world. He is commissioned by many musicians, ensembles and orchestras such as Yehudi Menuhin, Hilary Hahn, Aki Takahashi, Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars, and the New York Philharmonic and has written more than thirty compositions, including works for piano, orchestra, chamber music, choral and electronic music, theater pieces and music for traditional Japanese instruments.