Toshio Hosokawa

The classical tradition has been combined with highly innovative imagination by Japan-born pianist and composer Toshio Hosokawa. The first place winner in a composition celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1982, Hosokawa has continued to pave his own path. In an early-1990s interview, he explained that his music is “calligraphy with notes in space and time, notes that come from the world of silence and also return to it.” A native of Hiroshima, Hosokawa studied piano and composition in Tokyo as a teenager. He continued to study while living in West Berlin between 1976 and 1986. The artistic director of the Akiyoshidai International Contemporary Music Seminar and Festival since 1989, Hosokawa returned to live in his birthplace in 1994. Hosokawa’s masterpiece is his composition, “In Die Tiefe Der Zeit (Into The Depths Of Time),” written for cello and accordion. Initially featured on an album shares with avant garde composer John Cage, the piece was later featured on an album recorded by viola player Nobuko Imai and accordionist Mie Miki. According to Hosokawa, the viola “symbolizes the male principal, the accordion a sympathetic response to that voice, a fertile womb embracing it.” ~ Craig Harris