Hub New Music with Special Guest Kojiro Umezaki

Hub New Music:
Called “contemporary chamber trailblazers” by the Boston Globe, Hub New Music is a “nimble quartet of winds and strings” (NPR) forging new paths in 21st-century repertoire. The ensemble’s ambitious commissioning projects and “appealing programs” (New Yorker) celebrate the rich diversity of today’s classical music landscape.
Kojiro Umezaki:
Noted by The New York Times as a “virtuosic, deeply expressive shakuhachi player and composer” and the LA Times as one of the “better kept secrets of Southern California music,” Kojiro Umezaki (梅崎康二郎) has performed regularly with the Silkroad Ensemble since 2001 with whom he appears on multiple recordings including the Grammy Award winning Sing Me Home, A Playlist Without Borders, Off the Map, and the Grammy-nominated 2015 documentary film, The Music of Strangers, directed by Morgan Neville. In a Circle Records released (Cycles), an album of original work, in 2014. Other notable recordings as performer, composer, and/or producer include Brooklyn Rider’s Dominant Curve, Yo-Yo Ma’s Appassionato, Nicole Mitchell’s Mandorla Awakening II, Kei Akagi’s Aqua Puzzle, The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan (Smithsonian Folkways), and Huun Huur Tu’s Ancestors Call. Born to a Japanese father and Danish mother, Umezaki grew up in Tokyo, and continues to explore global and hybrid practices in music.
Program:
Dai Wei How the Stars Vanish…
Chad Cannon Death Masks
Sun-Young Park 月光 Moonlight
Angel LamRiver Whispers
Kojiro Umezaki Tied Together by Twilight
Takuma Itoh Faded Aura

Michael Avitabile, flutes
Gleb Kanasevich, clarinets 
Meg Rohrer, violin 
Jesse Christeson, cello

Special guest Kojiro Umezaki, shakuhachi