Sound
of Waves Inspires Winning
Orchestral Score
By Ioana Patringenaru | February 13, 2006
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| Yumiko
Morita, a
graduate music
student |
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Since she came to La Jolla in 2000, Yumiko Morita, a graduate student in music, has often listened to the ocean. Over time, music began forming in her mind, tentatively capturing the essence of the sound of the waves. “Echoes of a Wave” was born. This weekend, Morita got a chance to hear her piece performed by a full orchestra for the first time at Mandeville Auditorium.
“Echoes of a Wave,” became this year’s La Jolla Symphony and Chorus’ Thomas Nee Commission. Days before the performance, Morita already was nervous.
“The premiere of a piece is always a mix of excitement, nervousness and a little bit of surprise,” she said. “I enjoy it but I can’t get rid of the nervousness.”
Her piece features many unusual sonorities, bent notes and the creative use of percussion instruments. The orchestra seemed to be struggling at rehearsals but was making progress, she said. The La Jolla Symphony is a great ensemble, committed to performing the piece, and John Fonville is a very good, precise conductor, Morita said.
Before the concert, Fonville, who also is the chair of UCSD’s music department, said that premiering new works by living composers is one of the most rewarding experiences he’s had.
“To give life
to something never heard
before is perhaps the
greatest satisfaction
a performer can have,”
he said.
UCSD music professors
chose Morita for the
commission. Launched
in 1997, the Thomas
Nee Commission honors
the legacy of the symphony’s
Music Director Emeritus.
This commission has
been instrumental in
recognizing new talent,
premiering new and unusual
compositions and giving
professional experience
to young composers,
symphony managing director
Anne Merkelson said.
Jeff Nevin’s “Concerto
for Mariachi and Orchestra”
was the first composition
to win the Commission
in 1998
This year, it took
Morita about nine months
to craft her 12-minute
work, which doubles
as her doctoral dissertation.
She finished writing
it in December. She
wasn’t trying
to imitate the sound
of a wave, she said.
Instead, she sought
to capture the essence
of that sound, its texture,
and turn it into musical
form. She took a lot
of pains to write minute
details for the score.
Morita said she had
an image in mind while
she composed: an invisible
wave crashing on a cliff
in the middle of the
night. She also had
a specific sound in
mind, very slow and
roaring.
“It’s like the ocean sleeping and breathing,” she said.
But, she added, she
hopes her audience will
come up with their own
mental images when they
listen to her work.
Morita studied the piano in Japan, her homeland. She started playing that instrument at age 3. She turned to composition around age 14 or 15, because she found it more interesting to produce than to perform, she said. It was scarier, but more challenging.
“You have to start with a very white paper,” she explained.
As a composer, she has one goal, she said.
“(It) is to find my own language, my own music,” Morita said.
She’s not quite there yet, she added. In a way, getting the commission allowed her to take stock before she graduates, she said.
“It makes me realize what I’ve done and it makes me realize what I need to do more,” she explained.
Morita came to the United States in 1995, after earning her bachelor’s in music composition and a graduate diploma at the well-known Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo. She then earned a master’s in music at the New England Conservatory and headed west to San Diego for her Ph.D. UCSD is a very good school for students of contemporary music, she said, and all the professors are very friendly.
On the way, her music has changed. She now feels she is more open as an artist, she said. While working in Japan, she said she believed music was global and rejected cultural influences. After living in the United States, she got to see music from different angles and let her Japanese side back into her work. She gave “Echoes of a Wave” a Japanese title, made up of the characters for “ocean” and “gong.”
Morita said she would
like to teach composition
after she graduates
and hopes to stay in
Southern California.
She has already won
many awards, including
the Round Top Festival
held in Texas, The Sonus
Imaginorem Composition
Contest in San Francisco,
the Piano Duo Competition
in Japan, and was a
finalist in the ALEA
III International Competition
in Boston.
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