This conversation featuring composer/performers Mike Duffy, Colin Holter, Josh Musikantow, Schuyler Tsuda, and Jeremy Wagner and conductor Bob Whalen illuminates the preparations the CMW has undertaken toward a performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s cosmic epic Ylem.
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Kado: The Way of Flowers
by Schuyler Tsuda
Schuyler Tsuda, cello
Ikebana, or Kado, is the Japanese art of flower arrangement. While on the surface an aesthetic art form, the practice of ikebana requires one to experience nature in a different way, from a new perspective. Beauty is found not only in the blossom but in the fragile, withering leaf. Asymmetry, so commonly found in nature, is valued over perfect symmetry. Empty space holds just as much importance as the plants themselves. Flowers are arranged not simply to create the beautiful but rather to place them in harmony with each other, in order to allow their natural beauty to emerge. The practice of ikebana opens a space for the practitioner and viewer to see and appreciate all the things in nature that we overlook and ignore in our daily lives.
About Schuyler: Schuyler Tsuda’s current musical interests involve creating new sound worlds through experimentation and discovery of unorthodox instrumental techniques, physical instrument extension, and instrument invention.
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Colin Holter interviews Schuyler Tsuda.
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On building instruments:
I started taking art classes at some point. My first class was with Chris Larson, and it was a metal sculpture class. I’m not sure why I took it, to be honest, but I was interested in doing some kind of sound sculpture thing. When I first started, I was sort of a fish out of water because I’d never done anything like it before, but Chris Larson would say “just go ahead and do it.” The class was very heavy on conceptual feedback, which was great, because I got to the point where I wasn’t inhibited about working and learning from other people. That’s maybe the best way for me to work, to be able to experiment safely. The instrument I keep coming back to is the steel cello, which is based on Robert Rutman’s steel cello, which is just a huge steel plate suspended on a frame. I just do it on the floor or hand-held, it’s a smaller version, and I use steel rods on the surface with a spring reverb chamber I put together on top of it. Sonically it’s my favorite because I can do so much with it. But of course I think that it’s probably the least sound-sculpture-like; it’s more of just a DIY instrument. >>>>