Minoru Miki was a Japanese composer and artistic director, particularly known for his promotional activities in favor of Japanese traditional instruments and some of their performers.
Biography
His vast catalogue, where aforementioned traditional instruments figure profusely either solo or in various types of ensemble with or without Western instruments, demonstrates large stylistic and formal diversity. It includes operas and several types of stage music as well as orchestral, concerto, chamber and solo music, and music for films. Miki was probably the second best known Japanese composer overseas after Tōru Takemitsu. He was a pioneer in the composition of contemporary classical music for large ensembles of traditional Japanese musical instruments. In 1964 he founded the Nihon Ongaku Shūdan, also known as Ensemble Nipponia, for which he has composed extensively. Miki was born in Tokushima in 1930, and his first musical experiences were connected with the traditional music of his region. He had no formal music education before he moved to Okayama for high school, where he first had contact with European classical music. From there he moved to Tokyo, graduating from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1964. That year, Miki founded Pro musica Nipponia, an orchestra of traditional Japanese instruments for which he would compose a large number of works. He also began cooperation with koto virtuoso Keiko Nosaka, developing the 20-string koto and reviving the instrument's repertoire with many new works in a variety of genres and combinations, including five concertos for koto and orchestra. Miki composed his first opera, Shunkinsho, in 1975. Interest by members of the English Music Theatre Company in Japanese traditional music led to contacts with Miki, which resulted in the commission of the opera Ada, An Actor's Revenge, to an English libretto by James Kirkup. Ada premiered in London in 1979 and was one of the last works commissioned and performed by the EMTC before its ultimate disbandment in 1980. During this period, Miki developed a relationship with director Colin Graham that was to last until the latter's death in 2007. The most notable result of this cooperation was the opera Jōruri, commissioned by Graham for the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and premiered there in 1985. From 1992 with Wakahime, Miki turned to a pan-Asian perspective, incorporating music and instruments from a number of Asian countries in his compositions and collaborating with a number of Asian artists. Some of Miki's operas from then on – and notably Wakahime and Aien – also increasingly tend to deal with episodes of Japan's presence and interaction with its Asian neighbouring countries, often incorporating the use on stage and within the plot of such countries' traditional instruments. Miki died of sepsis at Mitaka city hospital, in Tokyo, during the early hours of 8 December 2011.
