Optical Operas & Orchestral Oblivions :: The Prolificacy of Toshi Ichiyanagi
A confidence filled world with unpopular worship and complexed telepathy that only the stark suits and wildly entertaining shadows speak. An echoed body riddled with skills both exhausted and widely known between the divorced horizons of night and day. Amongst its vapors of historical frequencies and labored breathing leans a soft monk dedicated to his thirst for loaded laughter and the hallucinations of a grand staircase to kingdoms hushed by legendary silence. Its crypt filled with translucent light as a thousand eyes hatch simultaneously, while piercing through the soul of man where a window was carefully left open unattended
With no whereabouts of its long-toothed keeper, the blasted sound of a mundane ritual and the abandoned vegitation of war are pulled back into a clear vacuum of space and time for calculated discharge. Born and raised in Kobe, Japan in 1933, just a decade shy of the US bombing of ‘42 during the Second World War, Ichiyanagi began his fierce journey in music as the great John Cage’s student. Mastering composition and swiftly inhaling the sweetly charred aromas of what it takes to be a composer, the young musician embodied the mighty magic of music as he ricocheted from one genre to the next like some cosmic pinball.
Eventually relocating to New York to attend The Juilliard School of Music as well as The New School For Social Research in the early to mid ‘50, it was here Ichiyanagi met his future wife Yoko Ono, who at the time, was a philosophy manager and soon to be member of the multi-faceted group known as Fluxus. Deciding to elope after estrangements and clash of traditions, the newly wedded couple traveled through time and space together, while fruitfully venturing into the shapeless depths of music and art before their untimely separation in ‘62. Having returned to Japan a year prior to bravely disperse the marvelous lessons he had gained from Cage, Ichiyanagi pressed his unparalleled ear to the stone of critical tradition and ultimately challenged it to its ancient core. With early works such as “Kaiki”, “Distance”, “Music For Piano #7” and 1963’s acclaimed “Sapporo”, which famously demonstrates the composer’s early use of “graphic notation”, Ichiyanagi would soon establish an incredible alliance of young, passionate composers known as New Direction to conquer the depilating status quo of culture with its swift, avant-garde sorcery.
Finding himself in a more solo setting after the release of 1967’s extensive collaborative effort entitled “Extended Voices”, which featured musicians such as Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, Robert Ashley and The Brandeis University Chamber Chorus, Ichiyanagi would go on to release the decade’s ultimate nightcap with “Opera "From The Works Of Tadanori Yokoo" in 1969. A heroic effort into the blistering sunset of mortality and volcanic energy that can only be achieved by a master of his craft. With tracks such as “Electric Chant”, “The Flowers Pt. 1 & 2”, and the late composers romantic ode to his home away from home, “Song Of New York”, Ichiyanagi explores a truly remarkable ecosystem of echo chamber impulses and radioactive scripture. A response to the hardened hieroglyphics of past, present and future, “Opera "From The Works Of Tadanori Yokoo" is the ultimate exploration into the soul’s inner walls, where light meets darkness.
Over the years the composer straddled both the abstract and the more conventional approaches of music with a startlingly prolific body of work that stretches across valleys and holy mountains with immaculate influence. An ocean of work that explores the balance of concept, tradition, professionalism and wondrous ability, Ichiyanagi shape shifts into the feverish night of ultimate human experience, where the body and mind wed into this glassy morph of blistering, visionary greatness.
