Walking onstage last week at UC-Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall to receive the composer’s traditional bouquet of flowers, Naomi Sekiya probably didn’t stop to think just how far she had traveled to reach this point. For the second time in four months, her work was performed by a major symphony orchestra. The 34-year-old Los Angeles resident has come a long way from the tiny northern Japanese village of Togichi, where she was born.
Arriving at UCLA on scholarship in 1989, Sekiya studied music and is now in the graduate music department across town at USC (she has degrees in composition from both institutions). She’s fallen in love with Los Angeles. “I like the diversity here,” she said. “Being different is the normal thing — it’s not like everybody has blonde hair and blue eyes.”
Her studies with principal teachers Ian Krouse at UCLA and Donald Crockett at USC have helped Sekiya immensely, to the point where she’s won a number of international competitions, including the Witold Lutoslawski International Competition for Composers (2001), the Ojai Music Festival Award (2000), the Dimitris Mitropoulos International Composition Competition (1999), and the Michele Pittaluga International Composition Competition for Classical Guitar (1998). Her orchestral works have been performed in Estonia, Poland, Greece and the United States.
Sekiya’s connection to the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and its noted Japanese American conductor Kent Nagano, arose last year through BSO’s composer-in-residency program. Sekiya frequently heads north to Berkeley, spending up to a week meeting with Nagano, orchestra members and student groups throughout the Bay Area as part of the sharing process, lecturing on her experience with aspiring musicians from elementary to graduate school.
&Mac221;I’ve had an opportunity to get to know the conductor, the musicians, the staff and board very well,” she said. “They are very friendly and open to new music, and that helped me to create a wonderful work relationship.”
The benefits to Sekiya have been tremendous: last September the BSO performed the world premier of her Sinfonia delle Ombre, and last week her Concerto for Two Guitars and Orchestra, featuring the guitar duet Duo ASTOR, had its initial performance. The concerto touched an instrument close to her heart, the guitar.
“Guitar is a fun instrument to compose for,” she said. “With six strings, I can always create harmonies.” She lamented its place in the symphonic palette, however. “Somehow it’s a second-class citizen in classical music. I want to bring it up to the level of other instruments.”
ümong her inspirations are composers Toru Takemitsu and Maurice Ohana, who she believes “have produced both strong guitar music and colorful orchestral works.”
She will continue to compose for Duo ASTOR, while working on a more ambitious project with Nagano and two other composers on The Manzanar Project. Nagano, born in California’s Central Valley, is acutely aware of the detention camp legacy: Both his parents were interned during World War II. Sekiya is writing music for the proposed hour-long multimedia project, scheduled for Spring 2005, collaborating with jazz composer David Benoit and French film score writer Jean Pascal Beintus.
What’s remarkable is that Sekiya doesn’t play any musical instruments, aside from dabbling with the piano. She uses a software program called Finale to sound out her visions. “When I play the piano, I’m not playing Chopin, I’m just conforming the notes!” she said.
All the while, her family living in Japan has little idea of what Sekiya is doing far away. “They have some idea I’m composing pop music!” she laughs. Although she goes back to visit every four or five years, her life is now based here in Los Angeles. “I like to keep very busy, “ she said.
New projects include more guitar music with ensembles in Montreal and Tokyo, as well as a concerto for saxophone quartet and orchestra in Europe. What continues to inspire her to write new music? “I can’t really answer that question,” she said. “It may take another 50 years to find out.”