Lafcadio Hearn Project - Creating a World of Expression

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) lived in Ireland, Greece, Britain, the United States and Japan.  As a writer, teacher and translator, Hearn played a significant role in introducing Japan and Japanese literature and culture to the Western World in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.   His translations of traditional Japanese ghost stories into English are among this best known works.  These stories have formed the basis for these new works by four composers. 

The Irish composer John McLachlan; Paul Hayes, also Irish, who lived in Japan for many years; the Japanese composer Yuji Itoh; and Akemi Naito, Japanese by birth but long resident in the United States — four diverse composers drawn from the countries in which Hearn lived — each selected a story from Hearn’s Ghost Stories and composed new music.

Through the precise synchronisation of word and sound, literature and music merge, opening up a vivid and immersive new world of expression for the audience.

Programme

Akemi Naito：UBAZAKURA (2017)

John McLachlan：Fragment (2016)

Yuji Itoh：The Reconciliation (2017)

Paul Hayes：The Second Heaven of Desire in Old Tramore (2017) (Opera Comique for Solo piano, narrator and Electronics/Musique concrete)

Performers

Piano：Satoko Inoue

Reading：John McLachlan