![Glistening ray [“kintsugi”] / Akari Komura<div class='yasr-stars-title yasr-rater-stars'
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2° place in tie – Femfestival 2022
“Kintsugi” is a traditional Japanese craftsman technique which intends to repair broken pottery with golden lacquer by mending the broken pieces. The philosophy behind this artistry has a deeper connection to the Japanese aesthetics of embracing imperfection as a part of wabi-sabi. Instead of masking the defect or trying to remodel it back to the original form, the golden seam of lacquer rather highlights the “scar” as a part of a life event.
This string quartet work, glistening ray, was inspired by such beauty of embracing the flaw into a transformed new artwork. Through the music, the piece expresses the progress of creation, flaw, and restoration with the timbre explorations of strings.
Akari Komura
Akari Komura is a Japanese composer-vocalist. Her interest in the somatic practice and embodied consciousness is central to her creative process. Akari imagines her score as an invitation for the performers to contemplatively engage with listening and soundmaking.
Her works have been presented at the Atlantic Music Festival, Composers Conference, Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, Nief-Norf, Penn State New Music Festival, and soundSCAPE. She holds an M.M. in Composition from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in Vocal Arts from the University of California, Irvine. Her major teachers include Evan Chambers, Roshanne Etezady, Stephen Rush, Frances Bennett, and Seth Houston. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Composition at the University of California, San Diego.
