Composer and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ music professor Hiroya Miura already had plenty on his plate when a music festival in the Czech Republic made him, as they say, an offer he couldn’t refuse.

In addition to teaching at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and directing the college orchestra, Miura was composing an opera — his first — when the International Shakuhachi Festival, in Prague, asked him to write music for a participating ensemble, the BERG Orchestra. But in its particulars, the commission was really asking him to tackle not one, but two more professional firsts.

The commission was for a concerto, a type of orchestral work in which one instrument (rarely, two or three) plays a virtuosic leading role. And the proposed concerto would feature a traditional Japanese flute called the “shakuhachi.”

Miura had never written for shakuhachi nor composed a concerto. “I initially was going to turn down the commission,â€� says Miura, who’s on sabbatical this academic year.

Shown with the BERG Orchestra, Hiroya Miura takes a curtain call after the world premiere of his concerto for shakuhachi in Prague’s Domovina Hall on Sept. 16, 2019. (Karel Suster/Courtesy of BERG Orchestra)

“But the BERG Orchestra is the only orchestra dedicated to playing contemporary music in the Czech Republic, and is known for adventurous programming and a high quality of music making. I couldn’t say no.â€� Still, with only six months to write the concerto on top of everything else, “it was a bit like jumping off a cliff.â€�

As it turned out, it was one big jump that had two happy landings. On Sept. 16, with Miura in attendance, the International Shakuhachi Festival premiered his concerto Galactic Monarchs, performed by the BERG Orchestra with shakuhachi master John Kaizan Neptune as soloist. The performance, which won Miura four curtain calls, concluded the five-day festival.

Then, a few weeks later, in three performances Oct. 5–6 in San Francisco, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and guest artists premiered the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor’s Sharaku Unframed, a 25-minute, one-act micro-opera featuring Hidejiro Honjoh, an acclaimed innovator on the “shamisen,” a traditional Japanese three-string instrument.

Video: Hidejiro Honjoh and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble perform “Sharaku Unframed� on Oct. 5 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (Courtesy of the Left Coast Chamber Orchestra).

“The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble has a wonderful audience base and the opera was extremely well-received,â€� says Miura. “The whole experience of working with the Left Coast musicians and Hidejiro was a sheer joy.â€�

He adds, “It was probably the first time in my career that I produced this much music in such a short period of time.�

The inspiration for Miura’s operatic debut was one of the more mysterious figures in Japanese art history. T�shusai Sharaku was a woodblock printmaker known for producing some 140 images of Kabuki theater actors during a 10-month period in the 1790s. But few other biographical details survived.

That changed in 2008, when Sharaku was identified as the creator of a fan drawing in a museum on the Greek island of Corfu. This revelation led to additional sleuthing that convinced researchers of Sharaku’s real identity: He was Sait� Jurobei, a samurai in service to the Hachisuka family and an actor who played only insignificant, non-speaking parts in Noh theater performances.

Note the Noh vs. Kabuki distinction: The former was associated with the ruling class of samurai, who regarded Kabuki as common, even vulgar. If Sait�, aligned with the ruling class, was nevertheless drawn to the latter, it would have behooved him to conceal his real identity when frequenting Kabuki playhouses.

Miura based his opera on Ghost of Sharaku, a short play by Arthur Davison Ficke, an American poet and aficionado of Japanese woodblock prints. The play takes place during the opening of an actual Sharaku exhibition in New York in 1940 — and in play and opera alike, all the characters are ghosts, just as many Noh characters are.

The play even includes a brief appearance by Jurobei’s master, Lord Hachisuka (sung by shamisen player Hidejiro Honjoh), and a silent attendant.

Hidejiro Honjoh (at left) and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble perform Sharaku Unframed at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on Oct. 5. (Courtesy of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble)

The opera is scored for two singers; a flutist who doubles on bass flute and piccolo; violist and bassist; percussionist; and Honjoh, of course. “This was my third piece for Hidejiro,� Miura says.

As a musician, Honjoh belongs to a school of shamisen that, among other attributes, “focuses on the timbral expression and its varieties. He talks of the universe which exists within a single utterance of a sound,â€� Miura explains. “I strived to create the orchestral backdrop using the lean instrumentation I was given to match the sensuality of the shamisen’s timbre.â€�

He adds, “The timbre is so important that the player has to string the instrument right before the performance. This unusual practice says so much about the shamisen aesthetics that focus primarily on a timbral quality that can only come from brand-new silk strings.� But it does mean constant attention during the performance to keeping the still-stretchy strings in tune.

As for the concerto for shakuhachi, the bamboo flute? Well, that instrument and the concerto form may have been new to Miura, but he was well-acquainted with the organizer of the shakuhachi festival. That was Czech musician and impresario Marek Kimei Matvija, and Miura had previously written a piece (for shamisen) for one of his projects.

“I was moved by Marek’s dedication to promote Japanese traditional music and his vision for keeping tradition alive by being unafraid to ask composers to write new works for those instruments,â€� Miura says. “Sometimes the traditional music milieu in Japan tends to be conservative and overprotective of tradition, and I found his attitude refreshing and inspiring.â€�

The shakuhachi has only five holes for fingering notes, but by partially covering the holes and varying the angle of blowing the flute, a skilled player can produce a nearly infinite variety of pitches.

“What also characterizes the color of shakuhachi is the sound of air — noise — going into the instrument. The tone is almost never ‘pure’ in the sense of Western music,� Miura says. “The gradation of noise to tone is what makes the instrument so attractive to me.�

A star of the shakuhachi, John Kaizan Neptune is a California native who attended the University of Hawaii primarily because of the islands’ surfing opportunities. En route to dropping out of the university, he discovered shakuhachi in an ethnomusicology course — and ultimately moved to Japan and became one of that nation’s best-known players of the instrument.

Shown just after the close of the 2019 International Shakuhachi Festival Prague are, from left, shakuhachi player Akihito Obama, Czech composer Jan Rösner, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ composer Hiroya Miura, and shakuhachi player John Kaizan Neptune. (Karel Suster/Courtesy of the BERG Orchestra)

“I knew about John ever since I was a child,â€� Miura says. “He’s probably one of the first non-Japanese shakuhachi players who mastered the instrument. He’s been living in Japan since before I was born — in some regards, he’s much more Japanese than I am!â€�

In the course of writing Galactic Monarchs for the festival, Miura adds, “I went to John’s beautiful dome house, which he built himself. He also makes shakuhachi from the bamboo around his house. I had so much fun getting to know the instrument and who he is as a performer. It was an eye-opening experience.â€�

Galactic Monarchs is scored for string orchestra, harp, and percussion, as well as shakuhachi. Because of the flute’s origins as a meditation tool for Buddhist monks, “classical shakuhachi music doesn’t have a sense of meter or pulse — which creates a unique sense of temporal experience.â€�

“It was a bit like jumping off a cliff.”

Wanting to honor that tradition and the corresponding sense of timing that Neptune has developed, Miura wrote the shakuhachi parts in a so-called spatial or proportional notation, which situates groups of tones within specific time intervals but leaves the actual rhythm of the melodic line to the player.

And the title? Miura once “watched footage of a few million butterflies taking flight simultaneously in a forest in Mexico. The piece is inspired by the sound they create.�

He notes that if mathematician-meteorologist Edward Lorenz “was right in saying that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas, I thought the flaps of a few million butterflies might stir up the stars in the Milky Way.�

Hidejiro Honjoh tunes his shamisen during a Left Coast Chamber Ensemble rehearsal. (Courtesy of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble)

“Race on!� someone yelled from the shore. But that was a lot to ask of 14 students making their maiden voyage on the Puddle in long, narrow flat-bottomed boats.

Eight in one boat and six in the other, the students used paddles and poles to meander around the pond for a few minutes before heading back to shore. It was late afternoon on May 22.

About 100 people looked on, as did wary blackbirds perched on the reeds. A skilled canoeist steered curlicues around the student boats to give his video-shooting passenger the good angles. But no pressure, kids!

 A video clip of the boat launch by Theophil Syslo/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College

Now, if someone had yelled, “Chiseling on!� or “Planing on!� those same students would have been all over it — for they had built the wooden Japanese-style boats during the previous five weeks of Short Term.

And they had just launched them in a ceremony that culminated “Apprentice Learning: Building the Japanese Boat,� one of the practitioner-taught courses arranged by the Center for Purposeful Work.

A boat builder and writer from Vergennes, Vt., Douglas Brooks taught the course and presided over the highly ritualized boat launch. The Buddhist and Shinto spiritual traditions co-exist in Japan, Brooks told his audience. But Shinto, whose rituals honor the spirit kami that reside in all creation, rules all things boaty.

“Conducting the rituals brings us closer to nature and closer to something divine,� Brooks explained. “And that’s it. That’s it.�

“I’m doing a purification ritual over the students, who badly need that,� Brooks kidded, “and over the boats.�

A shrine had been set up on a table between the boats. It contained offerings to the kami in the form of fruit, green tea, and sake, and there was a stick to which streamers of accordion-folded paper were attached. To begin the launch ceremony, Brooks shook the streamers over the boats and students, placed a handful of rhododendron leaves on the shrine, clapped twice, and offered a silent prayer.

Douglas Brooks shakes the streamers over the boats. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

One by one, the 14 students from Brooks’ course continued the purifying ritual, anointing the boats with salt and sake, and striking a few sparks over them, which protects travelers when they leave home.

Then each followed Brooks’ example with the rhododendron leaves (offered in place of a Japanese plant unavailable here), claps, and prayers. A few onlookers took part, too. (One observer was Ralph Sylvester ’50, a frequent visitor to the boat-building sessions.)

Next came an a cappella song that amped up the mood. It was a traditional Japanese song led by En Sawyer Lee, who had met Brooks when both were studying folkways on the same institute on an island in Japan. It was a big rousing song in a sea chantey vein and a smiling Lee got the crowd to join him in a staccato call-and-response of the word “Yoisa!�

En Sawyer Lee leads the “Yoisa” chant. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

And then, to applause from the viewers, the students carried their boats to the shores of Lake Andrews, slipped them in, and set out across the water. A safe distance across the pond, students in two inflatable vessels looked on. Yoisa!

Varsity rower Grace Murnaghan ’20 of Lexington, Mass., was on her feet poling the six-person boat. The boat handled “surprisingly well,” she said later. “It didn’t exactly turn on a dime, but we were able to get the hang of maneuvering it pretty quickly.

“From what I heard from Mr. Brooks, it sounds like Japanese farmers and fishermen who owned these boats could use the pole to travel with speed in a perfectly straight line, a feat we certainly didn’t conquer in our short trip around the Puddle!”

Japanese tradition informed the boat-building course from the start. Held in a back room off the Chase Hall loading dock, course sessions were mostly silent, with just brief instructions and demonstrations to begin each gathering. The idea was to elevate observation and mindfulness as ways of learning.

Students carry one of the boats to the water. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“It’s kind of cool, because you’re focused on what you’re doing and it’s repetitive motion,� Nathaniel Badger ’22 of Edwards, Colo., explained during an open house for the course a week prior to the launch. “You kind of get into this trance where you’re meditating through your work.�

Each of the students learned each of the woodworking techniques that Brooks taught, and learned to flow from task to task according to need, whether the need pertained to the process or to a particular set of aching muscles.

A ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ rower, Grace Murnaghan ’20 handles the pole as her boat executes a turn before the eyes of the crowd on the Lake Andrews shore. Alex Platt ’22 is paddling. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“One of the first things we were told was, even if you’ve built a boat before, when you walk into the class, assume you know nothing,� Badger said. “You need that fresh start, because if your ego is in the way, you’re not going to get out of the class what you want to get.�

Since 1996, Brooks has apprenticed with Japanese boat builders and written several books on the practice. Just prior to the launch, he described his ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ experience as “fantastic,â€� drawing the syllables out for emphasis.

“From the organization of this course, working with the Center for Purposeful Work, to the collegiality of faculty who contacted me with an interest in my course, to the students, who really were wonderful and worked very hard,� he said, “it’s been amazing.�

One of the first things Emilio Valadez ’18 of San Antonio noticed about hip hop dancers in Tokyo, particularly breakdancers, is that they’re really good.

“I saw such great mastery of it during my time there,� said Valadez, himself a hip hop dancer. “I saw people that had equivalent skill levels doing this in the streets and at clubs. I was so blown away by the degree of skill and homing in on the technical aspects of this very technical, acrobatic dance form.�

Funded through a Phillips Student Fellowship, which supports experiences in a country or culture different from one’s own, Valadez spent nine weeks in Tokyo researching the art, sport, and culture of Japanese hip hop dance. He spoke about his experiences in Pettengill Hall on Dec. 4 as part of a series of student presentations ahead of a Feb. 1 deadline for several summer opportunities.

Emilio Valadez ’18 talks about his summer Phillips Fellowship in Tokyo, where he talked to breakers and lockers and poppers, learned new moves, and explored the culture and tensions of hip hop dance in Japan. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Valadez paced the front of the room as he talked about the dancers and crews he encountered in Tokyo. Pensive, he chose his words carefully and often corrected or qualified what he said. He wanted his audience to know that although his research was anthropological, he was a philosophy major, and while he had some insights into Japanese hip hop dance, he didn’t want to make any “huge claims.�

“The evidence that I got was from hanging out, talking with, and observing hip hop dancers in Japan,� he said.

Valadez, who speaks Japanese, figured out through social media where dancers in Tokyo congregated. He approached them and asked them to teach him a new move. They made him do the move over and over until he got it right. They introduced him to their friends and told him where to find more dancers.

“I met people who took this style of dance as, ‘This is my life, this is who I am, this is important to my identity.'”

Some of the dancers practiced in bars, many of which catered to a particular style, like popping, locking, breaking, or voguing; others danced in parks or on a city street, using the windows of a financial building as mirrors. In a lot of circles, mastery was a priority. So was keeping up appearances — Valadez wore a red-white-and-blue tracksuit and a baseball cap during his ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ presentation, to show that in Tokyo, you need to look the part.

“I met people who took this style of dance as, ‘This is my life, this is who I am, this is important to my identity,’� he said. “The immediate equivalent I can imagine is people pursuing this dance in New York, a really highly competitive scene. People are really focused on skill.�

Valadez also spent a lot of time with the Nova Grande crew, dancers who he said practiced in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park, or on the street, or in their own bar. Instead of practicing and perfecting any one style, they told him they saw dancing as a form of storytelling.

Emilio Valadez ’18 photographs the Nova Grande crew in Tokyo. (Courtesy of Emilio Valadez)

“They use dance to bring themselves into this interesting and imaginative space,� Valadez said. For example, “‘I want to go to the desert. How do I dance in the desert?’ And then you imagine the desert, as one of them put it. It was such a cool approach to dance.�

Hip hop dance, which is rooted in black and Latino cultures in the United States, came to Japan in the 1980s. B-boys in their 30s and 40s told Valadez that people started imitating American dancers they saw on TV, and American dancers came to Japan and imparted their craft.

Yet some of the meaning and history of hip hop was lost in translation. Valadez said many of the practitioners and fans he talked to didn’t understand the lyrics of English-language songs.

“There was a kind of disconnect that has led some to say, ‘All we were taught was the dance and the art and the sport of hip hop dance, but we were never taught the meaning and culture of hip hop,’� Valadez said. “‘We only got the aesthetics, but not quite the meaning.’ That was the narrative as I was told and as I understood it.�

While technically superb, some of the dancers that Valadez met in Japan say that the meaning and history of hip hop has been lost in translation. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The dancers Valadez met understood their work in different ways. Some thought of themselves as perfecting an American creation, “taking things from one to 10,� he said. Others considered themselves completely original.

Regardless of what exactly they were doing, they were doing it well — Valadez said part of what drew him to Japan was the precise and systematic way some dancers explained their moves in YouTube videos.

“Hip hop’s just one thing, Katsu. It’s you.�

One of the best dancers was , who started dancing as a teenager in order to look cool. He became famous and traveled, and as he learned more about hip hop, he began to feel disconnected from the genre’s origins in New York.

“He found himself in this interesting identity quandary that I think fans of hip hop dance can find themselves in, especially on the international scene — ‘What am I to this?’� Valadez said.

Katsu told Valadez that he eventually went to a mentor, who simply said, “Hip hop’s just one thing, Katsu. It’s you.�

Katsu came out of this identity crisis with an acute awareness of hip hop’s American context, but also “a universal hip hop egalitarianism, this universal view of how hip hop can save the world,� Valadez said.

Some dancers that Valadez met thought of themselves as perfecting an American creation. Others considered themselves completely original. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Valadez’s audience seemed to share some of Katsu’s awareness of the history of hip hop. They asked him about class and gender issues in Japanese hip hop, as well as Japanese society’s reaction to dancers in public.

While he described what he saw in Tokyo, Valadez stopped short of generalizing. Katsu’s understanding of hip hop was certainly not representative, he said. Some people told him they became dancers to impress people, others because it was a fun sport. Others told him, “I do this because I believe in the cause,� or, “I find this as a way to liberate myself from the almost oppressive nature of society.

“There’s this sundry of views all thrown into my noggin,� Valadez said. “I came to really appreciate the complexities of thought within the Japanese hip hop dance scene.�

Yuko Eguchi ’03 visits ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to present Japanese music, dance and the traditional tea ceremony.

Yuko Eguchi ’03 “was one of the most extraordinary students we’ve ever had,” says music professor Jim Parakilas.

An economics major who switched to music focusing on composition, Eguchi wrote an opera in her native Japanese for her senior thesis.

And she didn’t just compose an opera, Parakilas explains: She scored the work for Western and Asian instruments, trained her chorus of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students to sing in Japanese and her Japanese-speaking ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student actors to sing, and even devised a supertitle system so that audience members who didn’t speak Japanese could follow the story.

“It was the most amazing thing for one person to do,” Parakilas says. “That was quite typical of her. She was just a phenomenon and the opera was very powerful.”

Eguchi, who just defended her doctoral dissertation in ethnomusicology — specifically, geisha songs — at the University of Pittsburgh, returns to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ this week to visit classes and give two public presentations: a of traditional Japanese music and dance on March 3, and a of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony the following day.

Will Dunbar ’15 (left) of Greenville, S.C., and Colby Harrison ’17 of Kennebunk, Maine, in a scene from the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ production of “Enjoy,” directed by Brooke O’Harra. (Sarah Crosby/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Brooke O’Harra, who joined the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College faculty as an assistant professor of theater last fall, directs the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ production of Enjoy, Toshiki Okada’s black comedy about Japan’s “Lost Generation.”

Performances take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, March 6-7, and Monday, March 10; 5 p.m. Saturday, March 8; and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 9, in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Admission is $6 for the general public and $3 for students and seniors, available through . For more information, please call 207-786-6161. “This bittersweet drama,” wrote New York Times reviewer Jason Zinoman, “is distinguished by a style that turns inarticulateness into the sort of poetry that rewards close listening.”

Premiered in Japan in 2006, the play is a glimpse at the lives of college graduates in their 20s and 30s who have been stranded in low-paying dead end jobs by a decade of economic stagnation. It depicts a group of part-time clerks at a comic book shop — a so-called manga café — thrown off balance by a younger female co-worker, who makes them question the meaning of their lives in a shifting socioeconomic landscape.

Sam Myers '16 (left) of Riverton, Wyo., and Colby Harrison '17 of Kennebunk, Maine, in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ production of Enjoy.

Daniel Peeples '17 of Piermont, N.Y., in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ production of Enjoy. At left is Allie Freed '16 of Magnolia, Mass.

Allie Freed '16 of Magnolia, Mass., in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ production of Enjoy.

Will Dunbar '15 (left) of Greenville, S.C., and Colby Harrison '17 in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ production of Enjoy, directed by Brooke O’Harra.

Allie Freed '16 (right) of Magnolia, Mass., and Colette Girardin '16 (seated, left) of East Moriches, N.Y., in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ production of Enjoy.

Presented at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in a translation by Aya Ogawa, this black comedy “captures a specific cultural moment in Japan,” says O’Harra. “It’s at this moment when the characters have just turned 30, which has a very specific cultural significance in Japan — you’re supposed to be sort of settled in your life at 30.”

She says, “Because they don’t have full-time jobs, they’re this kind of weird culture that is considered not particularly productive and not dependable, even though it’s not their fault. They can’t get apartments, so a lot of them live in manga cafes if they don’t want to live with their parents.”

“Inarticulate, but also kind of extraordinary.”

Okada is known for writing what one reviewer calls “hyper-colloquial” dialogue — a stream-of-consciousness style marked by incomplete thoughts, constant interruptions and the absence of linear progress.

“It’s inarticulate, but it’s also kind of extraordinary,” says O’Harra. Adding another layer is the tendency of characters to start talking about other characters — and then assuming the personas of those other characters.

Brooke O’Harra, assistant professor of theater, directs “Enjoy.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“What’s good about the play is that it uses a kind of invented formal structure to tease out a social moment,” says O’Harra. “He’s taking what feels like a disrupted, stilted, hapless, complicated moment and he’s giving it form. It’s really smart.”

But the play is also replete with playful moments, karaoke singing and even dancing, with Rachel Boggia of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ dance faculty helping to develop the choreography.

Enjoy poses a formidable challenge for the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students in the cast, who must memorize large chunks of dialogue without the roadmap of a conventional narrative flow. The result will be a production in which the acting is driven less by characterization than a formalized approach to line delivery.

“It’s really good for our student actors to think not in terms of character, but instead in terms of clarity and their relationship to their audience,” says O’Harra, who brought to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ a rich background in contemporary and experimental theater.

“It’s difficult. For actors to learn a way to perform on a stage or to tell a story that’s nontraditional is really important on the college level, because more and more frequently, contemporary plays really step out of the idea of character and disrupt traditional forms of narrative.”

She says, “It teaches the actors a new way of listening and embodying a script.”

Koichi Kiyono’s “Cultivation II,” etching on cotton-wool and felt with hand sewing, appears in the Museum of Art exhibition “Redefining The Multiple: 13 Japanese Printmakers.”

Images of Maine by famed 20th-century photographer Berenice Abbott and prints by Japanese artists known for pushing the boundaries of printmaking media will be exhibited this fall at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art.

Opening Sept. 13 and showing through Dec. 14 are the exhibitions Redefining The Multiple: 13 Japanese Printmakers and Selections from Berenice Abbott’s “Portrait of Maine.“

Hideki Kimura, whose work is represented in the print show and who co-curated it with Sam Yates, director of the University of Tennessee’s Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture, where the show originated, discusses the exhibition at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, in the museum. A reception follows.

“Balancing Act” (c. 1965), gelatin silver print by Berenice Abbott. Museum purchase.

The Abbott images were published in her 1968 book A Portrait of Maine, and the original photographs in Selections were acquired for the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ museum’s permanent collection from 2005 to 2007.

The exhibitions mark the reopening of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art following a summer spent installing a new, state-of-the-art LED lighting system designed to both reduce the museum’s environmental footprint and improve the museum viewing experience for visitors.

The museum is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and until 7 p.m. Wednesdays during the academic year. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.

• Learn more about Redefining the Multiple: 13 Japanese Printmakers.
• Learn more about Selections from Berenice Abbott’s “Portrait of Maine.”

David George, lecturer in Spanish.

Research by David George, lecturer in Spanish, figured prominently in about a seminar in Spain dedicated to novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez.

Not widely known in the U.S. nowadays, Blasco Ibáñez was famous internationally in the 1920s, and Hollywood adapted several of his novels. Held July 3-5, the conference at the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, in Valencia, looked specifically at the author’s influence on cinema.

George looked at the author’s influence on Japanese film, not American. He discussed his rediscovery of two 1924 films adapted from the fiction of Blasco Ibáñez: Osumi to haha (“Osumi and her mother”), based on the story “The Old Woman of the Cinema,â€� and Wakasa yo saraba (“Farewell, youth!”), from the novel Woman Triumphant.

“At the summit of his international fame, Blasco Ibáñez was received as a real celebrity” in Japan during a 1923-24 visit, writes George. That buzz helped inspire a rash of translations of his work and, later in 1924, the film productions.

During his short visit, Blasco Ibáñez was surprised to find his picture alongside that of the movie star Rudolph Valentino by the door of a Kyoto cinema showing Blood and Sand, one of the Hollywood adaptations of his work.

George’s presentation concluded that if Blasco didn’t influence the development of Japanese cinema directly, his works did influence a reform of Japanese cinematic language that gave way to directors such as Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa.

• .

The orchestra performs music by Beethoven and Richard Strauss at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 19, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. Donations to a relief fund for the coastal town of Yamamoto-cho, 24 miles south of Sendai, will be gratefully accepted.

NBC affiliate WSCH-TV interviews Hiroya Miura, conductor of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Orchestra, prior to the March 19 concert that raised funds for the people of Yamamoto-cho, Japan.

For more information or to reserve seats, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Miura was born and raised in Sendai, near the epicenter of the earthquake, and his parents currently reside in Yamamoto-cho. According to Wikipedia, the town is one of the areas hardest hit by the quake.

The orchestra will dedicate the concert to the memory of those lost in the disaster, and Miura will personally see that audience donations are delivered to the mayor of Yamamoto-cho.

• Including donations received during the March 19 concert and online, more than $8,200 had been raised for Yamamoto-cho by March 22. Donations are still most welcome.

For people unable to attend the concert, donations can made online at www.batestickets.com or mailed to:

Support for Japan
ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College, Olin Arts Center
75 Russell St.
Lewiston ME 04240

About the program

The orchestra will play Beethoven’s landmark Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) and Richard Strauss’ Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments, works that “are full of youthful energy from these two German composers,” Miura says.

The Beethoven symphony is a milestone in symphonic music, a work marking the transition from the formal strictures of the Classical period to the more emotional, organically unfolding style of the Romantic.

The Strauss serenade, meanwhile, is the earliest composition by this late-Romantic composer to endure in the repertoire. It’s scored for flutes, oboes, clarinets, horns, bassoons, contrabassoon or tuba, and bass.

“Eroica,” which Beethoven completed in 1803, was written as he was coming to grips with hearing problems that would culminate in total deafness.

“It was probably the first time in history that a symphony became so intensely personal and dramatic,” Miura says, “and the ‘Eroica’ was by far the longest, and perhaps the most substantial, symphonic work of its time.”

The work makes bold use of brass instruments, especially French horn, “and it’s no surprise that the ‘Eroica’ was one of the most influential works for young Strauss, whose father was an orchestral horn player.

“It’s also no coincidence that this serenade by the hand of 18-year-old Strauss is in the key of E-flat major, the key of the ‘Eroica’ and Strauss’ later work ‘A Hero’s Life,’ ” Miura says. “I hope the audience will enjoy the virtual musical dialogue between young Strauss and Beethoven in these two works.”

The orchestra concert comes days before two Miura compositions will be premiered at the JapanNYC Festival organized by Carnegie Hall, with Seiji Ozawa as artistic director, in March and April.

Miura’s “Mitate” will be performed by the Juilliard Percussion Ensemble at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday, March 29. Line C3, also a percussion ensemble, debuts his “Blowout” at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center on Saturday, April 2. Both concerts begin at 8 p.m. .

A British holography artist and a member of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College physics faculty offer lectures relating to the current ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art holography exhibition, The Body Holographic: Harriet Casdin-Silver, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, in Room 104, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

The speakers are Pearl John, of London, whose talk is titled The Art of Holography; and Hong Lin, professor of physics, whose talk is titled The Physics Behind a Hologram. The event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.John uses large-format holography as a means of examining self-identity. She combines holographic images with text, video and photography to reach toward meanings that exist at the boundaries between words and images, and between artist and viewer. John’s holograms and installations have appeared in Japan, Europe and throughout the United States. She currently teaches laser technology in the United Kingdom.

Hong Lin has been at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ since 1991. Her research involves crystals that diffract light in different directions, and particularly potential mechanisms for stabilizing these diffractions, which can affect the operation of optical devices.

The Body Holographic, a collection of work by a pioneering figure in the art of holography, runs through March 19. The first American artist to develop a body of holographic work, Casdin-Silver began working in holograms — flat images that appear to represent objects three-dimensionally — in 1968. As the title indicates, The Body Holographic concentrates on the human form and its potential as a site of psychological, sexual and spiritual energy.

The exhibition is made possible by the Synergy Fund, a gift to the museum to explore ideas across disciplines through the arts. The gift is helping the museum and the college to look more creatively at how exhibitions are curated, experienced and communicated to museum audiences.

Showing simultaneously are Between Science and Art, comprising botanical X-ray photographs by contemporary Ohio artist Judith K. McMillan, and New Acquisitions: Local and Global Contemporary Photography, featuring artists from Maine, China and Africa.

A member of the Maine Art Museum Trail, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art is open to the public at no charge. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. School groups and tours are welcome; please call 207-786-8302 to schedule.

More information is available at the museum’s Web site.