SATOH, Somei

Somei SATOH was born in Sendai in 1947. His mother is a teacher of Japanese dance and his grandmother a professor of Sangen, the traditional Japanese three-stringed instrument. Such was this family influence that Satoh never western music until he was fifteen. At above the age of eighteen he became interested in western music, taught it to himself, and made rapid progress in the domain of experimental music. From the end of the sixties he brought his works for multimedia events to the attention of the public. In 1971, at the Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, he organized a multimedia arts event called "Global Vision" which lasted for twelve hours, In 1973, he wrote "Litania" for two pianos and digital delay (or piano and pre-recorded tape), his first composition to use staff notation. In 1980, "Lyra" for two harps, percussion and strings was awarded a prize for excellence in the Fine Arts Festival, Japan. He subsequently spent a year in New York with a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Satoh's works have been widely performed in the USA, Europe and many countries in the Pasific basin, and he is acknowledged to be one of the best-known Japanese composers in t he world.
In particular, his works have found considerable acceptance in the USA as representing one of the standard bearers of post-minimalism.
His works have been commissioned and / or performed by many festivals, including Spoleto　USA, New Music America, Ravinia, Bang on a Can, Cabrillo, Saratoga (USA), Huddersfield,
Almeida, New Intercultural Music (UK), Inventionen (Berlin), MANCA (France), Festival de Musica Visual de Lanzarote (Spain), etc....
Over the past decade many concerts of his music have been held int he USA, and, in particular, two works were presented during a whole week, in N.Y.: his image opera “A Journey through Sacred Time” (1985) and his operatic oratorio "Stabat Mater" (1987).
In 1997, thirteen performances of "River" (which was written for the contemporary dancers, Eiko & Koma, and the Kronos Quartet) were given in all over the U.S.A., and five days’public performances were also held at the Next Wave Festival, in New York. By a good result of the Festival, Satoh and the Kronos Quartet were awarded the New York Dance and Performance Award.
Remarkably, Satoh was invited to compose a new orchestral piece for the special programme of the New York Philharmonic and Kurt Masur of which is entitled ’Message for the Millennium’, and the first performance was very successfully held in November 1999, in New York. He was a composer from Asia as one of the most eminent six composers from all over the world.