Linked Verse

Linked Verse is a work that traverses Japanese and Western ways of being through a counterpoint of images and sounds. 3D projections that conjure up scenes of Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan and their rough equivalent places in America: New York City and San Francisco, interweave with music written for the Western cello and the ancient Japanese mouth organ shô. The work’s title and its structure come from the Japanese poetic practice of renga: an ancient form involving two or more poets taking turns in adding interlocking links in a long chain of unexpected associations. The process of creating Linked Verse was similarly collaborative between the composer and visual artists from the OpenEndedGroup as images and sounds were developed simultaneously through a sequence of joint residencies. To allow this, cellist Maya Beiser and shō player, Ko Ishikawa, recorded a large collection of solo and duo sketches at an early stage of production.