16 ORIGIN That Mayuzumi, Takemitsu, and Matsumura were all born around the same time is no coincidence. As teenagers, they experienced the devastation of war (though spared from conscription), and in early adulthood, they witnessed Japan’s values shift dramatically in the postwar period. They were, in essence, a generation that had to redefine “Japan” from the ground up. In this way, their position is not so unlike Ueno’s. Meanwhile, Madoka Mori (b. 1994), a younger composer educated at Toho Gakuen School of Music, has written several works for Ueno. Her 2022 composition Phoenix, created during the COVID-19 pandemic, offers a sonic portrait of Japan nearly 80 years removed from the war. Structured in five movements connected by a recurring motif, the piece evokes the form of a three-act opera with a prologue and intermezzo. Its diverse musical language—from atonality to pop-inflected rhythms—makes full use of Ueno’s agility and expressiveness. In the work’s final moments, the cellist suddenly detunes the lowest string to produce a dramatic, earthy resonance. This impulsive gesture, this burst of intensity, is perhaps the piece’s most compelling quality.
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