Program

01 September 2011
American Record Guide
Kuniko is an exciting and expressive percussionist who has performed a great variety of 20th Century music. She has made idiomatic arrangements of two pieces from Reich’s “Counterpoint” series (Electric Counterpoint was originally scored for guitars; Vermont Counterpoint, for flutes) and produces a delightful multitracked recording of Six Marimbas. I cannot fault the ingenuity and care of the arrangements and am awed by her technique and musicality. Unfortunately, the percussion instruments she uses (including steel drums and marimbas) obligate her to transpose much of Electric Counterpoint up an octave, and I miss the solid foundation for the harmony that the lower notes supply in the original. On the other hand, the Vermont arrangement (scored for vibes) improves on the flute original in many ways, not least in rhythmic incisiveness.

10 July 2011
The Sunday Times by Paul Driver

…That couldn’t quite be said of the young Japanese-American percussionist Kuniko, who played a 70-minute sequence at the recently built, crisply finished Parabola Arts Centre. The essence was her versions of three of the “couterpoint” pieces (for other instruments) by Steve Reich – whose 75th birthday the festival celebrated – but she began with a marimba suite of her own and fitted in Hywel Davies’s Purl Ground (2003) for marimba, an exercise in sotto-voce tremolos. The Reich works all involve mulitple versions of the same performer on tape, duly intermodulated, and often one wonders why a live element is needed at all. Kuniko left one in no doubt. Her lissome presence was all-dominating. She didn’t merely play her vibes, glockenspiel and marimba, she danced around them.

11 July 2011
L’Union by Cécile DELOBEL

Dans le hall d’exposition au 1er étage du centre des congrès, lieu digne d’une chorégraphie de Pina Bausch, haute et large structure métallique, de béton et de verre laissant passer en ses côtés la lumière, le ciel, les marronniers du jardin et la ville, c’est aussi à une véritable démonstration d’art martial que nous a invités hier après-midi, Kuniko Kato tout d’abord lorsqu’elle a joué Rebonds de Xenakis.

En percussions, tout le corps participe, c’est visible : les pieds sont sur la pointe pour un son plus aérien ou prennent au contraire appui sur le sol lorsqu’il faut de la puissance, les jambes assurent l’équilibre d’un côté ou de l’autre, véritable balancier, les bras dirigent les baguettes et leur intensité, chaque frappe est pensée, préparée tout en beauté. L’expression du visage elle-même l’accompagne ou l’anticipe comme chez le samouraï. Rien n’arrête Kuniko Kato, qui a fait son apprentissage à Tokyo, auprès de Keiko Abe, la reine des marimbistes. Elle est capable des rythmes les plus complexes comme dans Rebonds a. Elle enchaîne de façon virtuose comme dans Rebonds b l’alternance bien contrastée entre le chant de guerre, roulement des cinq toms et les sons du marimba et du woodblock, véritable souffle du vent dans les roseaux. Les sons viennent de très loin jusqu’à nous puis s’éloignent dans les trilles du marimba, sur la pointe des pieds, elle danse doucement comme dans Torse III d’Akira Miyoshi. Elle nous montre que tout peut se dire : les longues phrases insistent, interrogent, des accords aux amples vibrations avec pédale répondent : c’est Omar I et II de Franco Donatoni au vibraphone.

Toute la deuxième partie consacrée à la musique de Steve Reich emploie un dispositif de dix haut-parleurs qu’elle dispose en cercle autour d’elle et qui diffusent les autres voix lui permettant de jouer seule un morceau composé à l’origine pour six marimbas. Un ingénieur du son, Yuji Sagae, en règle l’équilibre pour qu’il corresponde au son naturel du marimba et à ce qu’elle joue. Littéralement entouré par le son, l’auditeur n’a plus qu’à se laisser ensorceler ou hypnotiser. En témoigne une petite fille au premier rang plongée dans ses rêves. Kuniko Kato nous montrera encore combien tout en jouant, elle se chante la musique de Steve Reich à elle-même, s’amusant de toutes les syncopes, changements de rythmes et toujours très claire dans ses intentions.

Electric Counterpoint qu’elle a transcrit pour pouvoir le jouer aux percussions et seule nous fera entendre aussi les steel drums, ces espèces de « casseroles » d’acier qui rappellent le son des gamelans dans une version qui enchante Steve Reich, signe de leur parfaite entente musicale. Pour finir ce furent des applaudissements nombreux et enthousiastes, saluant autant la musique que la chorégraphie de Kuniko Kato qui remercia par une dernière transcription : un chant japonais au marimba.

04 June 2012
The Big City Blog by George Grella

It seems the Art Space strug­gles against this obsta­cle. Reich is titan of con­tem­po­rary music and, in a coun­try where com­posers don’t reg­is­ter on the pub­lic con­scious­ness, he is gen­er­ally pop­u­lar with sophis­ti­cated fans of all sorts of music. Yet Kuniko’s con­cert was lightly attended, and much of the audi­ence seemed con­nected to the music through the Con­sulate Gen­eral of Japan. This was an excel­lent con­cert. The music, “Elec­tric Coun­ter­point,” “Six Marim­bas,” Ver­mont Coun­ter­point” and “New York Coun­ter­point,” with mod­est and lovely arrange­ments of Bach and Komi­tas, speaks for itself, and Kuniko’s craft is supe­rior. Reich’s work lends itself eas­ily to tran­scrip­tion to other instru­ments, and the pit­fall is that it is so easy that the results can be lazy and dull. She has a sub­tle and imag­i­na­tive ear for color, and mov­ing the lead voice of the open­ing move­ment of “Elec­tric” to steel drums was a gor­geous touch, adding a shim­mer­ing, sus­tained rich­ness as well as a delayed attack that made for a new, ambi­ent quality.

Per­cus­sion instru­ments call for a great appar­ent phys­i­cal­ity in play­ing than gui­tars or vio­lins or flutes, and that was visu­ally impor­tant in the con­cert, not only the effort of Kuniko in strik­ing metal and wood with beat­ers, but her danc­ing move­ments. She was filled up with the phys­i­cal­ity of Reich’s beat, even as the sonic edge of the musi­cal was gen­tler, as in the trans­fer of “New York” from pip­ing clar­inets to mel­low marim­bas. The music is very well known by now, but she made it refresh­ing. With her own ear and taste she responded to pieces that she clearly feels are beau­ti­ful and gave us music-making that took for granted the intel­lec­tual suc­cess of the composer’s process and craft and gave us the sheer beauty of it, and that’s a con­sid­er­able thing.

13 June 2011
Time Out Tokyo

‘This small girl plays so powerfully,’ marveled Steve Reich the first time he saw Kuniko Kato perform one of his pieces. Fortunately, the Japanese percussionist – who goes simply by her first name – took it as a compliment rather than a putdown. Kuniko has since established herself as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of Reich’s percussion pieces, first with the Brussels-based Ictus Ensemble and more recently as a solo performer. Her new album, Kuniko Plays Reich, features her own arrangements of ‘Electric Counterpoint’, ‘Six Marimbas’ and ‘Vermont Counterpoint’, devised in collaboration with the composer himself, and with Kuniko overdubbing the various parts. Live, she repeats the trick by playing with a backing track – not an ideal solution, perhaps, but we suspect she’ll be able to pull it off.

12 June 2011
Music Web International by Kirk McElhearn

This disc contains percussion arrangements of three works by Steve Reich, performed by percussionist Kuniko Kato using multiple overdubs. The artist says, “All three pieces were solo overdubbed; however I played through all the parts from the beginning to the end, without using loops or quantisation in order to emphasise the live atmosphere in ensemble performance. All of the mixings are based on my concepts and I closely collaborated with each recording engineer.”
Electric Counterpoint was scored for “as many as ten guitars and two electric bass parts”, which were taped, and an additional guitar performing live. Here, Kuniko’s arrangement loses the fluid, pulsing sound of the guitar, but creates its own sound-world, very close to other Steve Reich works for percussion. The effect is interesting and attractive, and listening to this piece made me forget what the original sounds like. It takes on a world of its own as a more jumpy work, and has an attractive sound and energy.

Six Marimbas Counterpoint is an arrangement of Six Marimbas, which, itself, is an adaptation of one of Steve Reich’s seminal works, Six Pianos. Kuniko performs this with one part live and five parts on tape. Compared to Reich’s own recording of this work, the sound is fuller and richer here, but the music is similar, and the tempo is close enough to the original that it differs by only a few seconds. This is, in my opinion, one of Reich’s most interesting works, and perhaps one of the best ways to discover his music. The original Six Pianos has, I think, a more attractive sound than the version for marimbas, but it’s obvious that getting six pianos on a stage is difficult. This work is full of gorgeous rhythmic interplay among the different instruments, based around very strict rhythms.

Finally, Vermont Counterpoint Version for Vibraphone is an arrangement of a work scored for eight flutes and tape. Here, played on vibraphone, it gives a much different tone than the original, yet it works just as well. As it is a work based on rhythmic structures, percussion fits the music, and the sound Kuniko achieves is quite attractive. The mixing is interesting as well, with a broad soundstage spreading out the various instruments so they sound both separate and connected at the same time.

If you’re a fan of Steve Reich’s work, you’ll certainly find this an interesting disc. If not, it may not be the best place to start, as the somewhat uniform approach of three works for percussion may not be the ideal gateway to this type of minimalism. But Reich’s music is based on rhythm, and percussion is the most apt type of instrument to perform it.

Well conceived, and very well recorded, the only downside to this enjoyable disc is that it is a mere 41 minutes. One or two more works by Reich would have been nice.

26 May 2011
Musica Magazine by Claudio Bolzan
Esponente di spicco del minimalismo in musica, Steve Reich è presente in questo disco con tre ampie composizioni per organici diversi, arrangiate e presentate dalla percussionista giapponese Kuniko Kato in una nuova veste strumentale (realizzata consultando direttamente lo stesso compositore): Electric counterpoint, articolato in tre movimenti (da eseguire senza soluzione di continuità), è presentato in un’elaborazione per vibrafono, marimba e nastro preregistrato; Six marimbas counterpoint è offerto in una riduzione per la sola marimba e nastro preregistrato, mentre Vermont counterpoint è eseguito nella versione per solo vibrafono e nastro preregistrato. Si tratta di composizioni nelle quali un modulo ritmico-melodico è ripetuto dall’inizio alla fine apportando microvariazioni tese a creare un impercettibile movimento all’interno di un tessuto compatto e, solo apparentemente, uniforme. Nell’affrontare questo arduo itinerario, la percussionista giapponese Kuniko Kato si è dimostrata una strumentista straordinaria, pienamente in grado di dipanare questi vasti e complessi edifici con una lucidità e una organicità tali da dar vita a una trama sonora di singolare fascino, grazie anche alle magie timbriche create con la marimba: è il caso, ad esempio, del Six marimbas counterpoint, reso con una precisione ritmica e con una energia davvero sorprendenti, o, ancora, del Vermont counterpoint, pagina di liquida fluidità affrontata con un controllo assoluto non solo del ritmo, ma anche delle dinamiche. Al disco è allegato un elegante fascicolo comprendente ampie e dettagliate note di presentazione firmate dallo stesso Reich e da Kuniko Kato.

24 May 2011
The Scotsman by Kenneth Walton

The music is familiar, but the artist isn’t. This is Japanese percussionist Kuniko’s debut album for Linn, in which she premieres her own percussion arrangements of three of American minimalist Steve Reich’s “counterpoints” of the 1980s – Electronic Counterpoint, Six Marimbas Counterpoint and Vermont Counterpoint. She focuses on a sound world dominated by marimba, vibraphone and steel pans, which colour these works with soft-cushioned textures. But it is her direct collaboration with Reich, and a worldwide network of top sound producers, that adds sheen to the multi-tracked finished article.