Musical works

Gotō (archipelago) was commissioned by Nagasaki-native, Montreal-based pianist Kimihiro Yasaka (with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts) as a collaboration with me, the composer Daryl Jamieson, and the archipelago itself.  

From April 2022 to February 2023, I went to Gotō four times – once per season. Yasaka-san accompanied me in July 2022. Each time I went to 1, 2, or 3 of the five main islands. I went to Nakadōri and Wakamatsu Islands (and nearby islands all linked by bridge) in Spring and Winter, Naru in Winter, Hisaka in Autumn, and Fukue in Autumn and Summer. In each place, I went to locations that were associated with religious sites (especially esoteric Buddhism, ancient Shintō, and Christianity), archeological sites (especially connected to the neolithic age and the missions to Tang China), and sites of natural importance (geological or unique plant species). In these sites I made audio and video recordings. 

These field recordings form the basis of the non-piano audio and video parts of the piece – they are intended to showcase a certain picture of the ‘place’ which is the Gotō archipelago. Because an archipelago is a set of places, however, rather than just a single place, I imposed a pattern on each part of the work, while still allowing a higher level of freedom and inspiration. The audio and video parts of the first four of the five main movements do not align: the audio part moves forward in time, starting in Spring and proceeding to Winter (roughly the order in which they were recorded), while the video proceeds roughly from North to South, starting in Spring and working backwards in time to Summer.  Each of these first four movements is centred around an element: Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. 

No recordings of actual fire were made, so Fire is widely interpreted as the ancients did – that which is burnable contains some element of fire in it – so the fire movement largely focusses on trees and plants. The fifth element in pre-modern Japanese cosmology is the void, or hollow place. This is a spiritual realm of limitless possibility – represented here by the images and sounds which connect most explicitly to Christian and Buddhist holy sites, with a strong emphasis on water – the concept of Primal Water being the origin point of all things being an ancient Shintō concept (and also a symbol of purification in Christianity as well). — Daryl Jamieson