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Kenji Bunch

New Bunch work about the Japanese Internment Camps

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America’s great reckonings continue. The late-blooming LGBTQ activist and Trekkie icon George Takei (a/k/a Ikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise) bears witness to a legacy of national shame in Lost History: A Memory, drawn from his personal recollections as a Japanese-American “enemy alien” in World War II under Executive Order 9066. Though Takei’s family was held in Arkansas and California, the theme has local resonance: the Department of Justice ran a detention camp for designated Japanese-American “troublemakers” at Dalton Wells, 14 miles outside Moab. The narrative coexists with a commissioned score by Kenji Bunch, one of three Japanese-American composers on the program. The festival’s longstanding sales pitch “music in concert with the landscape” hereby takes on a whole new meaning. —M.G.

George Takei will narrate the work at its premiere performance at Moab. For further information, visit the Moab website.

The Takei family. Courtesy of Moab Music Festival.

Two Portland Premieres for Bunch

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This Spring, Oregon will enjoy two world premieres by composer Kenji Bunch. The Oregon Symphony will premiere Aspects of an Elephant on March 11-13, and the Eugene Ballet will premiere the full evening ballet The Snow Queen in April. Bunch’s first full-length ballet with orchestra, it’s an ambitious project undertaken by Eugene’s Artistic Director, Toni Pimble, based on the traditional Hans Christian-Andersen story.

The Oregonian interviews Bunch.

Bunch Symphonies in Chicago

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Kenji Bunch descends on Chicago this month with a performance of his Symphony No. 1 with the Chicago Philharmonic, and the world premiere of his Symphony No. 3: Dream Songs with The Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus.

Bunch writes about the Symphony: “In 1879, the Smithsonian Institution created the Bureau of American Ethnology, an ambitious field research program to preserve a record of the native cultures decimated by a century of conflict and oppression. Ethnomusicologists and anthropologists working for the BAE spent months at a time on Native American reservations, painstakingly recording and notating tribal folk songs and translating their uncredited texts and poetry. Abstracted from their original voices and ceremonial use, these terse, plain-spoken texts offer timeless wisdom and emotional insights that feel hauntingly relevant in today’s precarious times.

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Symphony No. 3: Dream Songs is a song cycle scored for full orchestra and chorus, adapted from these translations, (particularly the work of Frances Densmore). I organized the eight songs of the cycle into three parts: songs of anxiety and unrest, songs of war and its aftermath, and ultimately, a prayer of healing.”

At ca. 40 minutes, it represents a major new work for Bunch and is one of many large-scale works the composer is creating over the next 2 seasons.

Kenji Bunch Concerti Commissions

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Next season will bring two new Concerto Commissions for Kenji Bunch. The Orchestra Engagement Lab will be premiering an electric violin concerto written for legendary electric violinist Tracy Silverman. The OEL is assembling an impressive consortium of orchestras that will each give a performance of the work Additional information can be found here.

The Corvallis Youth Symphony has commissioned Bunch to create an orchestra version of his Cookbook, originally written for clarinet and piano, for the outstanding young clarinetist, Jose Franch-Ballester. Based on their shared passion for cooking, eating, and very spicy ingredients, the orchestra version should be (pardon us) quite hot. Scheduled for premiere in May of 2013, the concert will also feature Bunch’s Piano Concerto with virtuoso pianist Monica Ohuchi as soloist, who also happens to be married to Kenji.