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Longtime collaborators Hub New Music and Silkroad Ensemble shakuhachi player (and composer) Kojiro Umezaki release a distance, intertwined on June 7 on In a Circle Records. The album is a culmination of a project begun in 2018 when Hub, Umezaki, and composers of the Asia-America New Music Institute premiered works at the Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA). The goal of the project was, and is, to bridge cultural divides. The musicians toured Japan in June 2018, and have performed regularly since. Storytelling from both traditional and modern perspectives is central to these quintets for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and shakuhachi. The album marks the debut recording of works by Umezaki, Takuma Itoh, Chad Cannon, SunYoung Park, and Angel Lam. In naming this album, the musicians turned to a major work from the Noh repertoire, Takasago (高砂), as a way to bring these quintets together. Takasago begins at the slopes of volcanic Mount Aso, a mere 20 miles/30 kilometers from one of the concert stops in Hita City (日田市). The legend tells us of a priest who departed from Mount Aso by land, river, and sea on a trip to the capital city. Upon his arrival, he encounters a pair of evergreen trees in human form--a married couple--who share a fantastical connection. Their roots are impossibly intertwined, despite being planted a full day's journey apart from one another. Inseparable, though, they supernaturally collapse time and space to be together, and under moonlight offer a celebration of life that traverses human generations. From this, we arrive at the title of the record: a distance, intertwined.

Track Listing

Press Quotes

a prime mover of piping hot 21st century repertoire'

     —Washington Post

contemporary chamber trailblazers

     —Boston Globe