UEDA, Susumu

Susumu Ueda was born in Osaka in 1956 and majored in composition in the Faculty of Music at Kyoto City University of Arts, where he studied with Ryōhei Hirose. He was awarded the Prize of the Kyoto Music Association. In 1980, he was appointed as a domestic trainee artist by the Agency for Cultural Affairs to further his studies in Tokyo. He began his professional career in the Kansai region in 1982 and received many commissions. He moved to Tokyo in the autumn of 1994, after which he began working creatively in many different fields and genres, composing choral pieces and other works in a classical style, writing the music for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 12th Asian Games held in Hiroshima in 1994, composing Winter Flame, the piece which served as the official theme music for the Winter Olympic Games held in Nagano in 1998 and other music for performance at events connected to the Games, music for NHK television programmes, music for television dramas including One Litre of Tears and Black Leather Notebook, and for animation films. Since 1999 he has composed 120 pieces in his capacity as the annual director of music at Kobe Luminarie, one of the largest illumination events in Japan. Since 2005 he has presented an annual memorial concert in Kobe in memory of the victims of the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake which occurred in January 1995. In 2008 he embarked upon a choral ‘Requiem Project’ in Kobe aimed at linking the disaster area, people and local communities by means of song in accordance with the themes of ‘mourning and hope’ and ‘reverence for life’, in the context of which he composed his Requiem: Never Forget the Day and You. His activities in this connection expanded to cover ten locations in Japan that have suffered national disasters and war damage. These activities continue to this day and involve him working with choirs consisting primarily of people who have themselves experienced natural disasters at seven locations in Japan, namely North Iwate, Sendai, Tokyo, Kobe, Sayō Town in Hyōgo Prefecture, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as presenting successful concerts overseas in Prague (2012), Vienna (2014), the Vatican and Italy (2016), and Poland (2019). Particular mention should be made of the highly successful concert held at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna in October 2014 at which his Requiem was performed, this being the first time that a requiem by a Japanese composer had been presented at this prestigious location. In 2016, thanks to a special dispensation from the Roman Curia in the Vatican, he performed a mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and presented highly acclaimed concerts as part of his ‘Requiem Project’ under the title of ‘Prayers for Reconstruction and Peace’ in the Sistine Chapel and the Basilica di San Francesco Assisi in the town of Assisi. His Missa Brevis: Precatio pro Pace, which received its first performance in Assisi on that occasion, was honoured by a dedication to Pope Francis in the Vatican.

Official website: https://www.composer-ueda.com/
Requiem Project official website: https://www.requiem-project.com/