SCHEMES (2007) 25’
For violin and orchestra
Commissioned by the Suntory Music Foundation
Jean-Claude Risset, composer
Mari Kimura, violin

Special Note: Schemes features Subharmonics, an extended technique developed by Mari Kimura which extends the violin’s range by a full octave below the open G string, without changing the tuning. The Subharmonic pitches are generated by precise bow pressure and speed. Previously these pitches were not thought to be possible on a violin without altering the tuning or without the aid of electronic manipulation. String players and physicists are amazed by this discovery. Ms. Kimura has been invited by physicists in North America and in Europe to work in their labs so that they may understand the-notes-that-should-not-be-possible. Ms. Kimura gives lectures, demonstrations, and masterclasses on this new technique to broaden the scope of performers who can use it for the expansion of the string repertoire.

Schemes was written especially for Mari Kimura. The work is in three movements. The cadenza of the first movement was by Ms. Kimura to feature the advanced performance techniques of Subharmonics. The cadenza is published in Strings magazine, with an accompanying article. (http://www.stringsmagazine.com/article/default.aspx?articleid=24421)

Instrumentation: 3(I=picc,III=fl en sol).3(I=corA). 3(I=bcl).2.1 cbass—4.3.3.3—timp(1).perc(3)—harp—piano(cel)—strings(au moins 2cb. à 5 cordes)

Premiere: September 5, 2007, Tokyo Symphony, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, conductor; Suntory Hall, Tokyo

MARI KIMURA, violin

Violinist Mari Kimura is widely admired as a performer, composer, and researcher. Through her creation of the "Subharmonics" technique and her pioneering work in computer music, she has opened up new sonic and expressive worlds for the violin. She has performed her own music and others’ in more than 20 countries throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Ms. Kimura has premiered major scores by John Adams, Tania Léon, and Salvatore Sciarrino; most recently, she introduced Jean-Claude Risset’s violin concerto, Schemes, with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. In November 2010 she will perform John Adams’s The Dharma at Big Sur with the Hamburger Sinfoniker and conductor Jonathan Stockhammer at the Klangwerktage Hamburg Festival. This year, Ms. Kimura received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition, and was selected as Composer in Residence at IRCAM in Paris. Her commissions include works for American Composers Forum, International Computer Music Association, baritone Thomas Buckner, Harvestworks, Music from Japan, and others. Described as a "Plugged-in Paganini for the digital age" (All Music Guide) and as "a virtuoso playing at the edge" by The New York Times, Ms. Kimura has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Jerome Foundation, Arts International, Japan Foundation, Meet The Composer, and NYSCA. Her new album, The World Below G, featuring original compositions using Subharmonics, comes out this fall on the Mutable Music label.

JEAN-CLAUDE RISSET, composer

Jean-Claude Risset (b. 1938) studied piano, harmony, counterpoint, and composition with André Jolivet, and mathematics and physics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. While he has always written for acoustic instruments, he is known as one of the main pioneers of computer music, together with Max Mathews and John Chowning. In the 1960s he worked with Max Mathews at Bell Laboratories where they worked on brass

synthesis, pitch paradoxes, sonic development processes, and the synthesis of new timbres. He created imitations of instruments and acoustic illusions, analogous to the visual illusions that can be seen in etchings by Escher, for instance sounds that glide up endlessly, or that go down the scale but end up at a higher pitch.

Mr. Risset takes advantage of synthesis to sculpt the sound, to inject expressivity and musicality into it. Beyond composing with sound, he composes the sound itself and plays with time within the sound rather than arranging sounds in time.

In the U.S. Mr. Risset has been composer-in-residence at the Media Laboratory at M.I.T. and is a frequent guest at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. He has served at IRCAM, established the computer sound systems at the Faculté d'Orsay and the Université de Paris, and currently is the director of the Laboratoire de Mécanique et d'Acoustique at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Marseille.

PRESS CLIPPINGS
Article on "Schemes" in All About Strings Magazine, including downloads of the sheet music

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