Interview with Akari Komura
Interviewed By Kate Gorman | December 2021
Captions by Akari Komura
Interview with Akari Komura
Interviewed by Kate Gorman | Dec 2021
About Akari Komura
Artist Statement
Growing up in a big city like Tokyo in the information age, a mass of data relentlessly flows into our eyes and ears. As our technology exponentially grows, it seems that everything gets analyzed into precise data and numbers. To me, this phenomenon appears to threaten our human innate ability to perceive things instinctively. The increasing attachment and dependence on such computed information and virtual knowledge seem to pull us away from an inherent human quality, which is direct appreciation and intuitive emotional responses to the physical environment. This quality brings light to undiscovered beauty that has always existed in our daily lives. It could be as simple as hearing a bird chirp and letting it naturally evoke an emotional response. I recognize similar possibilities of experience in the performance space, which embraces this lifelike quality through performers and audience members alike. With my background in voice, dance, and piano, I have always experienced performance spaces to be very intimate because they bring together discrete individuals in a collective experience.
What compels me to compose is the possibility to create performance spaces that cultivate directness in perception. As a composer, I am coming to realize the significance of listening to music and letting it soak in without thinking about its meaning. In fact, such perception requires us to let go of any filter for analysis or interpretation. In moments of such performance, we recognize the power of music to liberate ourselves to experience whatever emotions surge naturally. For performers and audiences alike, I think this impulsive surge of emotion has a transformative power to energize our inspiration and life force. This is the ultimate motivation for me to compose. I am also fascinated by the impermanent character of performance because it connects to the cultural values of my own experience growing up in Japan. As a part of wabi-sabi philosophy, I have come to value imperfection in the fleeting nature of life and objects. As I have reflected on my personal identity as a Japanese woman immersed in Western culture, finding this connection to the impermanent nature of sound, that vanishes after it vibrates in the air, inspires me to keep contributing as an individual artist.
Artist Bio
Akari Komura is a Japanese composer-vocalist. She grew up in Tokyo until she was twelve, then moved abroad due to her parent’s work to spend her teenage-hood in Indonesia. This transition impacted her to develop a deeper connection to music and to communicate with others regardless of the language barrier. From an early age, Akari has been involved in performing arts through playing the piano, singing, and dancing modern ballet. Her interest in nature-based contemplative practices is central to her artistic belief where the sonic expressions are imagined to emerge as an embodiment of natural elements. Under the influence of Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, and Hildegard Westerkamp, Akari explores to curate a ritualistic performance that invites both musicians and audience for a meditative and healing experience of mind and body.
Akari’s breadth of work spans chamber ensemble, multimedia/electronics, vocal music, and interdisciplinary collaborative works involving dancers, visual artists, and architects. Some of her works have been featured in the Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, Composers Conference, Atlantic Music Festival, soundSCAPE, and Penn State New Music Festival. She also has been an artist-in-resident for the Socially Distant Art program and Kinds of Kings Bouman Fellow 2020-21.
She holds a M.M. in Composition from the University of Michigan (recipient of the EXCEL Enterprise Fund and Sonic Scenographies Research Grant) and a B.A. in Vocal Arts from the University of California, Irvine. Her major teachers include Evan Chambers, Roshanne Etezady, Frances Bennett, and Seth Houston.
Image Description: Akari Komura, a young Japanese women wearing her hair up in a loose bun, is shown smiling in profile from the shoulders up.
