K A C F

Crossroads village is a term that refers to a settlement, primarily in U.S. American history, that was situated where two or more roads would intersect. The owners of farmland along a frequently traveled trail, path, or road, often paralleling a water route, would plan a village where two or three roads crossed. A general store, tavern, and a few other buildings would be erected. Near these villages, the social, commercial, educational, and religious aspects of the emerging society originated and were supported. Crossroads villages provided identity and vitality to the surrounding countryside and a sense of community in the early years of settlement.

Global Village is a concept closely associated with Marshall McLuhan, who popularized it in books such as “The Gutenberg Galaxy” and “Understanding Media”. McLuhan described how the globe has been contracted into a village by electric technology and the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time, presaging the Internet as an “extension of consciousness” thirty years before the advent of the Internet.

Let us start by noting that in this century the Village has far outgrown its humble origin as the frontier outpost occupying an intersection of routes. The Global Village has now swallowed and contains, within its ever-expanding boundary, a multitude of crossroads. The web of crisscrossing flow of information and diverse cultural memes has become the Village itself. Hence the switching of the order in which Village and Crossroads appear in the title for the program.
If the villagers of the by-gone era were exulting in the notions of unification, harmony and principled cooperation, then the younger generation of this Village may find equal value in diversity, creativity and principled individualism. The dark side of it is, as Homi Bhabha points out, it is now taken for granted that numerous communities exist in the antagonistic, conflictual, even incommensurate state, whether it is due to schisms of ethnic politics, economic inequality, religious conflicts, or cultural hegemony.
While it is important to take pride in one’s own cultural heritage and endeavor to break out beyond its boundary, it is expected for all residents of this Village to strike the delicate balance between mutual respect and seeking positions of strength. In many ways, the state of Massachusetts, and Boston as its center, stand at the forefront of this new and challenging climate.
Historically, when a tribe/nation/civilization encounters the Other, despite its often being accompanied by turmoils and violence, enterprising artists are often the first brigade that braves breaking barriers and defusing the tension. The result: mutual benefits as both sides regenerate through curiosity, imitation, assimilation, mutation and new synthesis. In this context, clarity in recognizing the otherness is often as necessary as is the creative fusion in this Village.

Liminal negotiation of cultural identity across differences of race, class, gender, and cultural traditions: It is in the emergence of the interstices--the overlap and displacement of domains of difference--that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nation-ness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated. —- How do strategies of representation or empowerment come to be formulated in the competing claims of communities where, despite shared histories of deprivation and discrimination, the exchange of values, meanings and priorities may not always be collaborative and dialogical, but may be profoundly antagonistic, conflictual and even incommensurable?

Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture

A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.

Martin Heidegger, Building Dwelling Thinking

We believe that KACF’s mission is perfectly aligned with this as its members and supporters all share a first-hand experience living the life on a crossroad. Taking this as the main theme, we did not hesitate plucking from many different trees in preparing this program. In the first piece, titled Village Music by the American composer Michael-Thomas Foumai, such crossroads abound: one between this world and the spiritual one as it is inspired by the Korean Shaman music (Shinawi - 시나위). At the same time, the piece brilliantly employs a cultural crosstalk having three western chamber instruments playing the role of Korean traditional instruments. Finally, it fuses two disparate musical traditions: the Korean and the Appalachian fiddle music as the composer explains. The second piece is a concerto for the 25-string Gayageum. It is an encounter between the soloist Do Yeon Kim and the Hwaum Boston Chamber Orchestra led by Jin Wook Park, a conductor thoroughly trained in the Western idiom. The Hwaum Orchestra then follows with a piece by Dvorak, probably the best known composer who had made the best out of his Slavic cultural heritage, creating several masterpieces that are universally admired. Aside from their own musical merits, Dvorak’s compositions, along with those of Smetana, Janáček, Bartók and the Balakirev Circle, with a gradated mix of nationality and cosmopolitanism, prompt us to think about what it is that pushes beyond its provincial scope to project a universal appeal, and how it is now in this era of youtube and the global cacophony.
But let us leave those hard questions to the composers and performers for now and move on to the final leg of the program: The Musical was born out of successful fusion of several genres: Besides its theater and dancing elements, the music has benefitted from those composers who bravely crossed boundaries among jazz, films, classical and popular music. One of the foremost among them would be Leonard Bernstein. He had voracious appetite for all of life as it reflects on his eclectic musical output that spans symphonies, art songs, masses, film music as well as musicals such as Candide, On the Town and West Side Story (with Stephen Sondheim). The latter is centered on a tragic story of teenage lovers torn by rivalry between two ethnic gangs. Naturally, it is also a brilliant commentary, delivered through groundbreaking fusion of theater, music and dance, on discrimination, social outcasts and immigrants, both in their obstacles and optimistic embrace of America.
Many of us are also in-betweens, and thus understand both challenges and privileges of being in that status. The performers of the program are in-betweens themselves juggling at least two cultures, many of whom also in transition career-wise. In preparing this program, we felt fortunate that not only are we enjoying several styles of music, but also forging collaborations among musicians with such a diverse background and skills. We hope that while enjoying the fruits of their hard work, the audience gain insight on building bridges that connect peoples with disparate perspectives, histories and preferences. Hopefully, we all benefit from broadening our horizon in charting the turbulent cultural water of this era.

Inspired by storytelling, Hawaii-born composer Michael-Thomas Foumai describes his music as using many forms of musical language to construct a compelling musical experience and journey. He has been the recipient of a Fromm Foundation Commission, Presser Foundation Award, 2013 American Prize, Sioux City Symphony Composer of the Year, 2012 Jacob Druckman Prize from the Aspen Music Festival, three BMI composer awards, 2014 Intimacy of Creativity Fellowship at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2013-14 Music Teachers National Association Composer of the Year, was selected by Maestro Lorin Maazel as winner of the Composers Competition at the Castleton Festival and served as the inaugural Kaplan Fellow in Composition at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in 2015 among others.
Upcoming performances this season include four orchestral premieres: The Spider Thread with the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Music in the High Castle with the Raleigh Civic Chamber Orchestra, the anime-inspired Fullmetal for the Iowa State Symphony and a Hawaiian-mythology triptych Children of Gods for the Hawaii Youth Symphony. Recent works include Village Music composed for Music from Copland House, Becoming Beethoven for the Portland Symphony Orchestra and The Fantastic Voyage inspired by the Hōkūleʻa Voyage for the Royal Hawaiian Band.
Previous performances have been presented at the American Composers Orchestra's Underwood New Music Readings, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Milwaukee Symphony Composer Institute, The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, Osaka College of Music (Japan), Shanghai New Music Week (China), Yogyakarta Contemporary Music Festival (Indonesia), Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong, Hawaii International Film Festival, Thailand International Composition Festival, MidWest Composers Symposium (Cincinnati), Daegu Contemporary Music Festival (Korea), Fresno New Music Festival, Aries Composers Festival (Colorado), June in Buffalo Festival, Wellesley Composers Conference, Mizzou New Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival and School, Staunton Music Festival (Virginia), EarShot New Music Readings (Buffalo, NY) and the Calarts Theatre (REDCAT) at Disney Hall.
In 2015, Momentum 21: Music for a New Century was released on Albany Records and featured the Shakespearian-inspired Lady Dark performed by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra conducted by Kirk Trevor. Other recordings include In Paradisum on Born and Raised performed by guitarist Ian O'Sullivan and Auld Lang Syne Fantasy by the Royal Hawaiian Band. A fourth-coming recording by the Royal Hawaiian Band featuring Spiritus Mundi will be released in the 2015-16 season.
Dr. Foumai holds degrees in composition from the Universities of Hawaii (BM) and Michigan (MM,DMA). He has worked with Christopher Rouse, Augusta Read Thomas, Robert Beaser and Steven Stucky. His primary composition teachers have been Bright Sheng, Michael Daugherty, Syd Hodkinson, Paul Schoenfeld, Erik Santos, Peter Askim, Byron K. Yasui, Donald Reid Womack, Takeo Kudo, Thomas Osborne and has worked closely with Derek Bermel. Dr. Foumai currently serves on the faculty of the University of Hawaii at Manoa where he teaches composition and theory.