Ken Ueno

Ken Ueno (born January 11, 1970 in Bronxville, New York) is an American composer.

Career

Ueno pursued initial studies in music at the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY, but soon transferred to Berklee College of Music, where he earned a B.M. in Film Scoring/Composition Summa Cum Laude (1992); his graduate studies at Boston University and Yale School of Music earned him Masters degrees; he later completed a doctorate at Harvard University.[1]

Ueno has taught at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.[2][3] He has served as co-director of Minimum Security Composers Collective,[4] and has earned the rare distinction of having earned the highly selective American Academy prizes for both the Berlin and Rome fellowships, and has worked with premier ensembles internationally to considerable critical acclaim.[5][6][7]

Works

Ken Ueno has composed for modern orchestra, jazz 'big band', chamber ensembles including woodwind quintet, choreographed dance pieces, and in a variety of other genres.[8]

As a performer, Ueno has performed at the Flea, New York City,[9] collaborated with violist Kim Kashkashian and percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky on the works Hypnomelodiamachia for viola, percussion, and electronics (2007), and Two Hands, a Kashkashian commission, for viola and percussion (2009). A monograph compact disc of three works for soloist(s) and orchestra, Talus for viola and orchestra, On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific Hypothesis for solo throat-singer and orchestra, and Kaze-no-Oka for biwa, shakuhachi, and orchestra, was released by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in 2010.[10] Ueno has also written for such ensembles as the So Percussion Group, Bang on a Can All-Stars, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Del Sol String Quartet,[11] Prism Quartet,[12] and eighth blackbird.[13]

Ueno's compositional approach frequently involves extra-musical modeling, including using images, cultural phenomena, or architecture as the basis for structural decisions, somewhat analogous to the use of architectural proportions in Renaissance music. Kaze-no-Oka, for example, reflects in part the structure of the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki's like-named project.[14] His Talus is, in a manner of speaking, a biography of a traumatic event in the life of its soloist, violist Wendy Richman, who shattered her ankle in a ten-foot fall.[15] He is keenly interested in the process of exploring unique, in some sense irreproducible, sonic events linked to the performers for which his music is written.

As a performer, Ueno is active as a throat-singing vocalist and performing with live electronics.[16] He is an accomplished guitarist.

In 2010, he was awarded the Berlin Prize residential fellowship in Music Composition at the American Academy in Berlin.[17]

Awards

Discography
  • "Ken Ueno: Talus", BMOP/sound, BMOP1014 [20]
  • "I screamed at the sea until nodes swelled up, then my voice became the resonant noise of the sea", in New Dialects, Centaur CRC 3038, Gregory Oakes, 2009 [21]
  • "Synchronism Six-Zero", in One Minute More, Transatlantic Foundation for Music and Art B001J54A8S, Guy Livingston, 2008 [22]
  • "Scrapyard Exotica," by Del Sol String Quartet, Sono Luminus (2015) (featuring "Peradam" (2012)

References
  1. "Ken Ueno". frommfoundation.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2022-12-30.
  2. "New Faculty Profile: Composer Ken Ueno Seeks Balance, Passion" Archived 2010-06-20 at the Wayback Machine, University of California, Berkeley. Kate Rix
  3. Molly Sheridan (July 21, 2008). "Decoding Ken Ueno". New Music Box. Archived from the original on August 4, 2011. Retrieved July 17, 2010.
  4. "MINIMUM SECURITY COMPOSER/CO-DIRECTOR: KEN UENO". Retrieved July 17, 2010.
  5. "PSNY: Ken Ueno Biography". www.eamdc.com. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  6. "Ken Ueno | BMOP". bmop.org. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  7. "Program 670: Other Minds Rewind". Other Minds. Retrieved 2022-12-31.
  8. "American Composers Orchestra - June 4, 1999 - Whitaker New Music Reading Sessions". Americancomposers.org. Retrieved 2010-07-20.
  9. "Ken Ueno & Du Yun at the Flea". Sequenza 21. May 1, 2010. Retrieved July 17, 2010.
  10. "Ken Ueno: Talus | BMOP". www.bmop.org. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  11. Times, The New York (2015-10-07). "Classical Playlist: Conrad Tao, 'Scrapyard Exotica' and More". ArtsBeat. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  12. Fonseca-Wollheim, Corinna da (2016-06-14). "Man, Can You Hear That Crazy Forest Green?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  13. "PSNY: Ken Ueno Biography". www.eamdc.com. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  14. From Ueno's performance notes, KenUeno.com
  15. From Ueno's performance notes, KenUeno.com
  16. "Ken Ueno—". EMPAC—Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  17. "Berlin Prize in Music Composition Fellow - Class of Fall 2010, Class of Spring 2011". American Academy in Berlin. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2012.
  18. "The American Academy Names 2010 - 2011 Berlin Prize Recipients" Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine, The American Academy in Berlin
  19. "Ken Ueno". Boston Music Orchestra Project. Retrieved July 17, 2010.
  20. "Ken Ueno: Talus", DRAM
  21. "recordings". gregory oakes. 2002-12-29. Retrieved 2010-07-20.
  22. "Downloads: One Minute More". Guylivingston.com. Archived from the original on 2009-12-17. Retrieved 2010-07-20.
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