Kotoka Suzuki (Japan) is a composer focusing on both multimedia and instrumental practices. She has produced several large-scale multimedia works, including spatial interactive audio-visual work for both concert and installation settings, often in collaboration with artists and scholars from other disciplines. Her work conceives of sounds as physical moving objects that are visible, constantly transforming into different forms, sizes, and colours, as they travel through the air at different speeds. Her work has been featured internationally by performers such as Arditti String Quartet, Continuum, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, and Earplay Ensemble, at numerous festivals such as Ultraschall, World Music Days, and Music at the Anthology. Awards she has received include DAAD Artist in Resident-Berlin, Bourges Multimedia Prize, Robert Fleming Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, Howard Foundation, and Musica Nova Competition Honour Prize. Suzuki is an associate composer at the Canadian Music Centre since 2001.

While ripples enlace…

Inspired by the composer George Phillip Telemann, this piece takes some of the materials from my favourite work by this composer: the Hamburger Ebb’ und Flut, also known as the Water Music which consists of dance suites that are each based on figures from Greek Mythology. The melancholic melodic lines of the 4th movement (Der Verliebte Neptune) and the beautiful, longing underlying harmonic progressions and seamlessly flowing and light melodic lines of the Overture are used as the main foundations in my work. Throughout the work, materials from Hamburger Ebb’ und Flut subtly come to the surface as ripples of sound change form. This work was commissioned by the Magdeburger Musikverein e.V. and premiered at the Magdeburg Telemann Festival in Germany by Lucia Mense in March 2010. The premiere of the work was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.