Look & Listen: Yumi Kurosawa, koto, with Sonia Coman-Ernstoff

Watch virtuoso Yumi Kurosawa perform and discuss music for the koto, a Japanese stringed instrument, alongside woodblock prints and ink paintings from our museum’s collections showing the instrument in a variety of contexts. She is joined by Japanese art scholar Sonia Coman-Ernstoff for an exploration of traditions pursued through creativity and playfulness at the intersection of sound, image, and text.

Since winning the National Japanese Koto Competition, Yumi Kurosawa has performed at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Apollo Theater, Blue Note (New York), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), and venues across Europe. She has appeared with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Grand Opera, and the Orchestra of the Swan in the United Kingdom, with which she premiered Daron Hagen’s concerto for koto. The New York Times called Kurosawa “an inventive, seemingly cosmopolitan composer . . . [who] presents her themes gracefully and then undertakes intricate, sometimes adventurous variations.” All About Jazz noted that, when she plays, “the koto’s notes flow like the water of a stream in a Zen garden, building melodic paths in a logic that resembles European medieval and Renaissance music.”

Sonia Coman-Ernstoff is the Anne van Biema curatorial fellow at the Freer and Sackler Galleries.

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About the "Look and Listen: Asian Art and Music" series: Enjoy monthly explorations into the intersections of Asian music—traditional, classical, and contemporary—with visual arts from across Asia and the Middle East, featuring outstanding musicians paired with art and scholars from the Freer and Sackler.

To enjoy more music featuring the koto, listen to "Koto Meets Quartet: Yumi Kurosawa and the Lark String Quartet" in our podcasts: https://asia.si.edu/podcast/koto-meet...