Cellist Aki Kitajima, who studied baroque and contemporary music in Germany, has been mainly performing in Japan and Europe. She performs baroque music on the baroque cello and modern and contemporary music on the modern cello.
From baroque music, she picked up the J.S.Bach's Suite for Unaccompanied Cello No.3 selection.

From contemporary music, there will be a "Virtual Musician's Residence " and a "Virtual Musician's Residence Academy", the second part of the Virtual Musicians Residence project, these were started as a project by composer Yukiko Watanabe under COVID-19 pandemic circumstances and these music was composed by three composers.

The purpose of this online project is for young composers’ education. The composers will work together with professional performers to create a new work while interacting and learning from each other for a certain period as a virtual creative residency to create a new work. The final piece will be uploaded on YouTube and shared on SNS from August 1st to September 30th.
URL: https://note.com/yukikocomposer/n/n6962438885f3
From modern music, third movement of the Suite for Unaccompanied Cello composed by Gaspar Casado that is popular masterpiece for solo cello.
In conversation with Yukiko Watanabe, this ambitious program also includes a comparison of the playing of each cello and the bow in an ambitious program that cuts deep into the appeal of the cello.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750): Allemande aus der Suite für Violoncello Solo BVW1009 Nr.3 C-Dur

From 1717 to 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach was the music director of the court band of the Marquis Leopold von Anhalt Köthen. The Six Suites for solo cello were probably composed around 1720. Bach also composed the Brandenburg Concerto, the Italian Concerto and the French Suite when he was in Köthen.

The Suite for Unaccompanied Cello, the Brandenburg Concerto and the French Suite are all six pieces in total, and the Italian Concerto is in three movements. This demonstrates the influence of the period's preference for multiples of three.

Bach probably wrote four suites at first. It was probably written for Christian Ferdinand Abel, or perhaps Christian Bernhard Linicke, who was a gambler in Köthen. It is not known whether Abel also played the cello, but Linicke was an excellent cellist and was the cellist of the court chapel in Köthen in 1716.

After Bach's death, the Cello Suite was forgotten for a while. In 1824, almost 100 years after its creation, the suite was first printed in Paris, but was published as an unknown composer.
At the time, performers were playing the piece as an etude. Pablo Casals, who considered to be the greatest cellist of the 20th century, popularized the suite and made it available to the world by performing it again as a piece of musical value.

Today, it is the work of a lifetime for professional and amateur cellists alike.

"Allemande"
French for "German style" or "German dance". It is based on a German folk dance.
It spreads to France, Spain, the Netherlands and England around the 16th Century.

In Late Baroque, Armando has sixteenth-note steps and auftacts. It also distinguished into fast tempo Allemande (à la breve, 2 beats) and slow Allemande (4/4 beats).

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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750): Gavotte aus der Suite für Violoncello Solo BVW1009 Nr.3 C-Dur

"Gavotte"
A historical ballroom dance which is called alla breve (two beats) with a bicentennial auftact. It is often in two parts.
Gavotte is a dance which is lively and joyful. It has been refined in the Baroque period, adding some nobility and elegance.

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explanation and comparison about Baroque and Modern cello.

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Explanation and music comparison about Baroque bow and Modern bow.
Please enjoy the difference in characteristics and sound between each instrument and bow.

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Tatsuki Hojo: Prologe-2

This music was composed at "Virtual Musician's Residence".

Tatsuki Hojo
Composer and Cellist.
He creates art music in the style of avant-garde and romantic music, using improvisation as his material. He works as a cellist-composer, composing art music (≈ contemporary music), improvising free music and performing classical music. He was awarded a prize in the JILA Music Competition for composition with "Autumn Cafe II" (2018). Also, he was awarded the Special Prize for Contemporary Music at the International Federation of Arts Newcomer Auditions for "Homage to HAMAGUCHI Yozo" (2019), but it was cancelled due to his withdrawal from the unveiling concert.

“Prologe-2”
This is a piece of music that was prepared by writing down improvisational ideas in cello improvisation. Overall, the music has mixing the static parts with images of the heart and breath stopping for a moment, these sounds make a feeling of tension.

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Riri Inoue: Boomerang ~For Cello~

This music was composed by Riri Inoue at "Virtual Musician's Residence Academy".

Riri Inoue was born in 1999 in Tokyo. She started studying piano and solfege at the age of four at the Senkawa Music School for Children, affiliated with the Toho Gakuen School of Music, and started composing music at the age of eleven as one of the first students of the secondary composition class.
She studied piano at Toho Gakuen School of Music and is currently a 3rd year student at Toho Gakuen School of Music, majoring in piano and minoring in composition.
She studied composition under Kazuro Mise. She studied piano under Kayoko Okuda and Nobuhito Nakai, and is currently a student of Toho Gakuen School of Music. She has been composing in a wide range of genres and has won many prizes in competitions for both piano and composition.

“Boomerang ~For Cello~”
In this piece, Boomerang is like a note that starts on a single note and then goes through various notes and comes back to that one note again. Symbolizin instability, I used the high range of the cello from the beginning. I imagined that no matter what kind of instability there is, it always comes back to that one note.

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Yoshiaki Sakai: “tip of the wind” for cello solo

This music was composed by Yoshiaki Sakai at "Virtual Musician's Residence".

Yoshiaki Sakai was born in Tochigi, Japan, and moved to Berlin in 2012.
He started his musical career in black music, as a bassist, playing jazz, composing and creating electronic music at the same time.
His musical influences are funk, reggae, hip hop, jazz, game music, house, techno, classical, folk and contemporary music. His main influences of composers are Miles Davis, YMO, Bartok, Ligeti, Xenakis, and Toru Takemitsu.
He composes and performs as a freelance composer and electronic musician, mainly in Europe.
Currently, he is mainly studying the compositional techniques of Xenakis. He is searching for the space between micro-structured sounds and the sounds of life.

“ “tip of the wind” for cello solo”
This song was inspired by the wind that travels around the world. The wind flows from the cold side to the warm side. From the sky above to the ground and from the sea to the land. I used the cello to depict this circulation.
The first half of the piece is a bit abstract, but the melody makes it easy to grasp, because of the unique fluctuation of the harmonics.
On the other hand, the second half of the piece is an actual sound, but the sounds are more abstract.
I hope listeners can imagine the wind in this music.

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Interview with Aki Kitajima and Yukiko Watanabe

Virtual Musician's Residence
https://note.com/yukikocomposer/n/n7c05cda28350

Virtual Musician's Residence Academy
https://note.com/yukikocomposer/n/n6962438885f3

Hostess: Yukiko Watanabe (compose)
She studied composition and solfege under Keiko Harada, and piano under Chiharu Hanaoka and Yoshio Mamiya, since her childhood. She went to Europe after graduating from Toho Gakuen School of Music. She studied under Beert Fuller and Johannes Scherhorn. Based on her experience of living in a foreign land, she focuses on the duality and ambiguity of things, and creates works based on the keyword "creative diversity". Her works are instrumental music, music for orchestra, performance works for the general public, objects for daily use, text and video, and works using human memories.
Awards: Nomura Cultural Foundation. Rohm Music Foundation. The piece was published at the same time with an Austria young composer <Ö1 Talentebörse-Kompositionspreise>. Fellowship from the Cultural Affairs(2013) for overseas agency and a scholarship from the International Ensemble Modern Academy. Invited Composer for the Art Village of Scheppingen in Germany. Temporary Composer at the Goethe Institute of Montreal in Canada.
Since 2017 she has been the Artistic Director of Project PPP, which was formed to provide a new place for young musicians.

Virtual Musician's Residence Academy
This is an online project aimed at fostering young composers. From June 1 to July 31 in 2020, it was used as a virtual residency to create new works, in which young composers will interact with professional performers and learn through hands-on experience while working together to create a new work.
The works created from August 1st to September 30th are going to be uploaded on YouTube and shared on SNS.

YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb9bvkZD0B88XefF8XEzKpw

Your donation will be used to help fund the project if you purchase this online article (390 JPY) as a project supporter. We would appreciate your support.
https://note.com/yukikocomposer/n/n7c05cda28350


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Gaspar Cassado (1897-1966): 3rd Movement from Suite for Violoncello Solo (1926)

Cassado was born in Barcelona into a family of church musicians and was introduced to the cello by his father at the age of five.
In 1907 he moved with his father to Paris, where he became a pupil of Pablo Casals, one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century, and also studied composition with Manuel de Falla and Maurice Ravel. He also studied composition with Manuel de Falla and Maurice Ravel.

His career as a performer began after the First World War and he has worked with Wilhelm Furtwängler (conductor), David Oistrakh (violin) and Mstislav Rostropovitch (cello), among others.

He was also active in the works of composers of his generation. He played works by Paul Hindemith, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Bohuslav Martinu, Luigi Dalla Piccola and others.

He also devoted himself to teaching younger students. His pupils included Radu Ardulescu and Rohan de Sarran.

As a composer, he composed this Suite for Unaccompanied Cello, Cello Sonata, Cello Concerto, Three String Quartets and Piano Trio. Many of his works are a wonderful combination of Catalan sentiment and classical music. He has also made numerous arrangements for cello and orchestra of works by W. A. Mozart and Franz Schubert, among others.