The term aizuri-e might not be immediately familiar to casual art lovers, but Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” likely is. The 1831 woodblock print, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, features three boats tossed in a huge wave with Mt. Fuji looming in the background. The vibrant blue ink Hosukai used in what's arguably his best-known work, imported to Japan from Europe, is instantly recognizable, and fundamental to the art form.
For the members of the Aizuri Quartet — violinists Emma Frucht and Miho Saegusa, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellist Karen Ouzounian — the Japanese art form that provided the group's name is inspiring. The similarities to their music are two-fold, Ouzounian said.
First, she explains, aizuri-e uses “the same materials we use as musicians, like wood and ink.” And, like the electrifying Prussian blue ink, the group’s music crosses borders, “developing, evolving,” she added.
That notion of porous borders is further explored in "Song Emerging," the program the Aizuris will perform on Friday, Nov. 18 at The Greene Space, the arts and culture venue operated by New York Public Radio. The expansive undertaking crosses time periods and genres, Frucht said, and centers around "The Aizuri Songbook” — which, like the Great American Songbook, is a collection of representative vocal music.
It’s also, as Ouzounian put it, illustrative of the group’s guiding ethos: curiosity. The idea for "The Aizuri Songbook," she said, came from the group's wish to adapt vocal pieces for the quartet. The song list includes classical lieder from Clara Schumann, Franz Schubert and Claude Debussy, as well as contemporary songs by Eleanor Alberga and Ben Russell. The Aizuris tapped their "friends and family," as they put it, to create the arrangements.
Also featured in the "Song Emerging" program is "Sivunittinni," a piece originally written for the Kronos Quartet by Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq. Though written solely for strings, the piece is deeply evocative of the composer’s native singing style. Translating the unmistakable sounds of Tagaq’s vocalizing for string quartet has been a “really exciting experience,” Frucht said. The process, focused intensely on capturing the essence of Tagaq’s “growling” and “inhalation sounds," was both challenging and rewarding for the players.
“It almost feels like you can go into a trance while you’re listening [to the piece] or playing it,” Frucht added.
But while Tagaq’s singing will be evoked through instrumental means in “Song Emerging,” the Aizuris will also incorporate actual vocalizing into their performance. Cellist Ouzounian will sing and play in a piece she arranged based on the song “Freight Train” by Elizabeth Cotten.
“We don’t always get to explore these small and intense personal worlds of songs,” she said. “We tend to play sort of larger-scale forms. And these are such concentrated and expressive worlds. There’s something about that that’s so special.”
Other programs the Aizuri Quartet will present this season show similar innovation. “Sunrise,” in the words of a program note by Miho Saegusa, journeys from “the moment darkness envelops the sky to the first shades of pink at dawn.” Another program, “The Art of Translation," juxtaposes music by Franz Schubert with more modern works. “Music and Migration,” a collaboration with Syrian-American clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh, explores migration as both "physical journey and state of mind, something that occurs both between and within countries."
The group's appearance at The Greene Space is part of the WQXR Artist Propulsion Lab initiative. Ouzounian describes both the songbook and the WQXR series as a “springboard for exploration." Pointing specifically to moments when the group evokes a guitar, a harp, or “a piano in some of the art songs,” she said it reveals that the quartet is a “living art form” — one infinitely capable of surprise.
The Aizuri Quartet presents "Song Emerging" at The Greene Space on Friday, Nov. 18 at 7 p.m.; thegreenespace.org
