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Asako Hirabayashi | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1960 (age 63–64) Japan |
| Occupation(s) | Composer |
Asako Hirabayashi (born 1960) is a Japanese-American contemporary composer and harpsichordist.
Hirabayashi was born in Japan and began composing and playing piano at age 7. She graduated from college in Japan as a composition major. She encountered the harpsichord in Japan, and adopted it as a good fit for her small hands and her desire to play on rare instruments. She moved to the United States in order to study harpsichord performance and composition at the Juilliard School in the 1990s. She earned a doctorate degree from Juilliard writing a dissertation titled, "Ornamentation in the harpsichord music of William Byrd." [1]
In the early 2000s, she moved to Minnesota where she became an active member of the Japan America Society of Minnesota. She performs locally, nationally and internationally, while composing and teaching. Her most recognized compositions include an opera, a Concerto for Four Harpsichords and Strings, and solo harpsichord and chamber pieces.
Hirabayashi's interest in historical instruments led her to collaborate with violinist Margaret Humphrey. They started the duo Cerulean Fire in 2012. Their mission is to provide the highest quality of music as well as increase the general public's awareness and appreciation of concerts with historical instruments. In 2014 Hirabayashi took over producing a "Music and Flower" show with the group Sogetsu Ikebana Group. This show was had been started by her friend Eiji Ikeda, a violist of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Performing her own compositions and other works, Asako makes regular appearances at the Baroque Room in Minneapolis. She performed in Japan, Carnegie Hall, London, and several global venues. She regularly collaborates with string players and other performers.
Hirabayashi teaches in her studio at the Saint Paul Conservatory.
Hirabayashi's musical style blends distinct melodic lines and traditional rhythms with structures built from the textures of Ligeti and spectralist composers.
Hirabayashi composes music for solo harpsichord and combinations of chamber instruments.
She composed and performed all the works for the CD The Harpsichord in the New Millennium.
The Classical period was an era of classical music between roughly 1750 and 1820.
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism that plucks one or more strings with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic. The strings are under tension on a soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard manual, and even a pedal board. Harpsichords may also have stop buttons which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of a plucked lute.
Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti, also known as Domingo or Doménico Scarlatti, was an Italian composer. He is classified primarily as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti, he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas. He spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families.
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Hendrik "Henk" Bouman is a Dutch harpsichordist, fortepianist, conductor and composer of music written in the baroque and classical idioms of the 17th and 18th century.
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Elisabetta de Gambarini was an English composer, mezzo-soprano, organist, harpsichordist, pianist, orchestral conductor and painter of the 18th century. Elisabetta's music is considered late Baroque and Classical music. She achieved distinction as an all-around musician, performing on, and composing for a variety of instruments as well as voice. Her compositions were known to reflect that of vocal work instead of instrumental patterns. She was the first female composer in Britain to publish a collection of keyboard music.
Jukka Santeri Tiensuu is a Finnish contemporary classical composer, harpsichordist, pianist and conductor.
Isolde Ahlgrimm was an Austrian harpsichordist and fortepianist. In 1975 she was awarded the Austrian Gold Medal.
Anna-Maria Yordanova Ravnopolska-Dean, born 3 August 1960, Sofia, Bulgaria, is a Bulgarian and American harpist, composer, pedagogue, musicologist and TV host.
Mari Kimura is a Japanese violinist and composer best known for her use of subharmonics, which, achieved through special bowing techniques, allow pitches below the instrument's normal range. She is credited with "introducing" the use of violin subharmonics, which allow a violinist to play a full octave below the low G on the violin without adjusting the tuning of the instrument.
Hanna Kulenty is a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. Since 1992, she has worked and lived both in Warsaw (Poland) and in Arnhem (Netherlands).
The harpsichord was largely obsolete, and seldom played, during a period lasting from the late 18th century to the early 20th. The instrument was successfully revived during the 20th century, first in an ahistorical form strongly influenced by the piano, then with historically more faithful instruments. The revival was the joint work of performers, builders, and composers who wrote new harpsichord pieces. However the harpsichord never completely disappeared from the public eye as it was used through the mid-19th century for basso continuo because despite its low volume, it had considerable power to "cut through" the orchestra. The earliest revival efforts began in the mid-19th century due to its increasingly infrequent usage and there was concern that the instrument could become a forgotten relic of the past.
Gary Cooper is an English conductor and classical keyboardist who specialises in the harpsichord and fortepiano. He is known as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Bach and Mozart, and as a conductor of historically informed performances of music from the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods.
Florence Marga Richter was an American composer of classical music, and pianist.
Graciane Finzi is a Morocco-born French composer.
Anthony Newman is an American classical musician. While mostly known as an organist, Newman is also a harpsichordist, pianist, composer, conductor, writer, and teacher. He is a specialist in music of the Baroque period, particularly the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, and has collaborated with such noted musicians as Kathleen Battle, Julius Baker, Itzhak Perlman, Eugenia Zukerman, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Leonard Bernstein, Michala Petri, and Wynton Marsalis, for whom he arranged and conducted In Gabriel’s Garden, the most popular classical record of 1996.
Mona Lyn Reese is an American composer, best known for her operas and choral music. Her work is melodic and accessible with an emphasis on driving or complex rhythms, movement, and contrasting textures. Her music communicates and expresses emotions traditionally or experimentally without allowing a prevailing fashion to dictate style, form, or harmony.
Sharon Ruchman is an American classical music composer and musician. Ruchman's works have been performed on Connecticut Style on WTNH, channel 8 in Connecticut, at the National Composers Association in San Francisco, the Hartford Women Composers Festival, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Western Connecticut, and Pomperaug Woods in Southbury, Connecticut.
Aleksandra Gryka is a Polish classical composer of experimental music. Her works have been performed at such festivals as the Warsaw Autumn, Sacrum Profanum and Juilliard Focus! Festival.
