Dai Fujikura

The music of composer Dai Fujikura draws on diverse sources of inspiration, including European avant-garde and traditional Japanese music. Fujikura has also collaborated with musicians from the fields of experimental jazz and pop.

Fujikura was born on April 27, 1977, in Osaka. He moved to London when he was 15 so that he could study music at Dover College. At first, he envisioned a career as a composer of film music, and this genre continued to influence his sound even after he switched to contemporary compositions. That switch came about after Fujikura began to study at Trinity College of Music and was exposed to compositions by <a href="spotify:artist:2prZJWfQMnIgwUKxKcBxH7">Pierre Boulez</a> (who became a mentor and major backer), <a href="spotify:artist:5p6TCmGe9IygOnvamIaZpA">Toru Takemitsu</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:1zb5zmIuX2lTbzcn7YeQlg">György Ligeti</a>. In his second year at Trinity, Fujikura won the Serocki International Composers Competition, and during his student years, his music was already being broadcast on European radio and performed by major ensembles, including the <a href="spotify:artist:68kuKZp7yrgzZpoh5m6dWA">London Sinfonietta</a> and the Orkest de Volharding. To continue his education, Fujikura traveled to the avant-garde German music center of Darmstadt, where, ironically, he first encountered Japanese traditional music. He went on to the Royal College of Music, studying with <a href="spotify:artist:2CDTStW27RfNtuFWtSfSKA">Edwin Roxburgh</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:3pYJ8R30XjH8PutGI42wtL">Péter Eötvös</a> and earning a master's degree. There, he wrote one of his first works, Okeanos Breeze, that mixed Japanese and Western elements. Fujikura returned to Britain, earning a PhD at King's College London for research into spatial separation (a technique he would often use in his own music) and cinematographic musical structures. Fujikura works as early as 2001's Echo Within for piano have been recorded; that work appeared on pianist Aleksander Szram's album Into the 21st Century.

Fujikura began to gain attention with Vast Oceans, for trombone, orchestra, and electronics (2005) when it was performed after being commissioned by the Donaueschingen Music Days in Germany. His orchestral works have been performed by such major groups as the <a href="spotify:artist:23BiSNXm5UaRFuusoWisYO">BBC Symphony</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:2prZJWfQMnIgwUKxKcBxH7">Boulez</a>'s <a href="spotify:artist:6auEkE1nJDzSod1SE6aVmZ">Ensemble Intercontemporain</a>, and the <a href="spotify:artist:0GlOFpRepnabV9byKzixRx">New Japan Philharmonic</a>, and he is also widely performed as a chamber music composer. He collaborated with dancer Koichi Omae on the project Sounding Seven Senses, and he has collaborated with artists from outside classical music, including improvisers <a href="spotify:artist:3GNzfnhVE1aY6fgK403107">Jan Bang</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:3nXJ669yt47ssgwwGeFat3">Sidsel Endresen</a>. In 2014, Fujikura became composer-in-residence of the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, and he continued to hold that post as of the early 2020s. Fujikura has written three operas: The Gold-Bug (2008), for children, was based on the short story by <a href="spotify:artist:6pcPyOpEwaoP9q7wOjqHx0">Edgar Allan Poe</a>, while Solaris (2015), with an English-language libretto by Saburo Teshigawara, was based on a science-fiction novel by Stanislaw Lem. Fujikura's opera A Dream of Armageddon had its premiere at the New National Theatre in Tokyo in 2018 and was adapted from a story by <a href="spotify:artist:2rvJXYj8Y9cQL86CEUb5zO">H.G. Wells</a>. In 2019, his Shamisen Concerto was premiered at New York's Mostly Mozart Festival. As of 2022, Fujikura was at work on an opera about the artist Hokusai. By that time, more than 30 of his compositions had been recorded. ~ James Manheim, Rovi