Japanese avant-garde composer Jun Ichiryu dies at 89

Avant-garde pianist and composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, who studied with John Cage and continued to lead the advancement of experimental modern music in Japan, has passed away. He is 89 years old.

Ichiyanagi, who married Yoko Ono before marrying John Lennon, died Friday, according to the Kanagawa Art Foundation, where Ichiya was artistic director. Cause of death was not given.

“We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to all those who have loved him throughout his life,” the foundation’s president, Kazumi Tamamura, said in a statement.

Studied and pioneered at the Juilliard School in New York, Ichiyanagi uses a free-spirited compositional technique that incorporates not only traditional Japanese elements and instruments, but also electronic music.

Known for his collaborations that broke genre boundaries, he collaborated with Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham, as well as innovative Japanese artists such as architect Kisho Kurokawa and poet-playwright Shuji Terayama, with whom Ono married him for several years starting in the mid-1950s .

“In my creations, I have always tried to allow the various elements of music that are often seen as contrasts and opposites to coexist and interpenetrate,” Yiliu said in an artist statement.

He says traditional Japanese music inspires and inspires him because it doesn’t focus on what music is usually defined as “the art of time,” or what he calls “divisions,” such as relative and absolute, or old and new.

Modern music, he says, is more about “great space to restore the spiritual richness that music has to offer”.

Among his famous orchestral works, there is the history of his rapid progress in Berlin. Renshi is a Japanese collaborative poetry that is more open-ended free poetry than older forms such as renku.

In 1989, Ichiyanagi formed the Tokyo International Orchestra – New Tradition (TIME), an orchestra focusing on traditional instruments and “shomyo”, a style of Buddhist chanting.

His music spreads freely across different influences and cultures, transitioning seamlessly from the minimalist avant-garde to Western opera.

Ichiyanagi travels the world, premiering his productions at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. The National Theater of Japan also commissioned several works from him.

Ichiyanagi has received numerous awards, including the Alexander Gretchaninov Prize from the Juilliard School, the Order of the Arts and Letters and the Order of the Rising Sun from the French Republic, the Golden Light and the Rose and the Order of the Purple Ribbon from the Japanese government.

Born into a musical family in Kobe, Ichiryana showed his potential as a composer at a young age. Before moving to the United States as a teenager, he won a major game in Japan, a move that was relatively rare in postwar Japan.

A private funeral is being held with the family. Japanese media reported that a public ceremony would follow in his memory.