On Thursday, March 27, the New Music Series hosted a solo viola recital by Kenji Bunch. Kenji Bunch is a violist as well as a composer of genre-defying pieces, drawing inspiration from personal experiences: his mother’s experience as a Japanese immigrant and his father’s as a social activist, as well as his own childhood “spent in the meditative natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest,” as described on his website’s biography. Bunch played an array of pieces, from his own compositions to pieces by other composers, such as folk musician Ola Belle Reid’s “I’ve Endured” and Alan Hovhaness’ classical piece “Chahagir.”
Bunch’s first piece, “Étoufée,” was something he wrote right after Hurricane Katrina as a tribute to the resilience of the people in the affected area. The piece was in an open tuning, as many of his pieces are, and featured droning chords with a Western twinge to them. The piece started hauntingly slow and gradually picked up speed, circling back again to the same motif over and over, quite like a hurricane’s rapid circulation. Many of Bunch’s pieces created a feeling beyond what just one viola’s timbre should be able to accomplish: a viscerally visible and felt experience.
Bunch’s next piece was another one of his own compositions called “Found Objects.” He described being inspired by the sound of a kora, an African stringed instrument, that he had heard someone playing at a subway station in New York City. What struck me about this piece was that the entirety of it was pizzicato, meaning that the strings were all plucked and not bowed. He held it in the same position one might hold a guitar, which is sort of uncommon with classical string instruments. If there is a plucked section of the piece, it is usually done in the upright position. This piece serves as just another testament to Bunch’s innovation in his composing.
Bunch introduced his next piece, “I’ve Endured” by Ola Belle Reid, by briefly mentioning how concert tuning, also known as Italian tuning, is used in most string music in the classical world. This tuning is viewed by many as the main tuning system for classical instruments such as viola, violin and others. But for other styles, like Appalachian fiddling, the Italian tuning is only one of many tuning systems they use.
“One thing I like about re-tuning the viola is I can imagine it’s a different instrument,” Bunch said.
When Bunch started the piece, I was instantly taken aback: he was not only playing, but he began singing as well. His voice was strong and resonant, voicing Belle’s verses that all circled back to the line “I’ve endured, I’ve endured, how long must one endure?”
After the first verse, the rhythm picked up, switching from long sorrowful chords to a faster fiddle beat. Bunch crunched his bow down on his viola, never missing a word.
Bunch’s entire recital seemed to push themes of resilience and courage, and this was clear in his performance of Reid’s piece. Strength was apparent not only in the vibrancy of his bowing, but also in the vulnerability of Reid’s lyrics, which Bunch repeated powerfully. One thing I really admired about Bunch’s performance was the spectrum of people he seemed to shed light on through his music, such as the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, African music through his piece inspired by the kora and other composers like Reid.
To me, this recital felt groundbreaking in terms of my own personal experience with classical string instruments. I grew up playing violin, taking private lessons from the age of 3 all the way into high school. There is so much that I appreciate about having a classical music upbringing. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to take private lessons, which are a huge privilege that many people don’t have access to. I feel lucky that I had such a great, musical community surrounding me that provided me the tools to learn and develop formal skills. However, I struggled a lot during that time with feeling confined in classical music. I dabbled in fiddling — I even tried to play the viola — but it felt as though there was always something missing from my experience that blocked me from connecting with what I was playing. There were so many rules that I didn’t fully understand that violin became less of a creative practice for me and more of a chore. For example, I always used to try plucking and strumming on my violin in the same way that Bunch played “Found Objects,” but I was told that playing this way would mess with my form. Before hearing Bunch play in open tunings other than Italian tuning, I wasn’t even aware this was an option. Hearing him perform with such innovative timbres and in so many different genres inspired something inside of me that had never realized how much a classical string instrument could really do. Bunch’s playing showed me that, while there is a lot to learn from the rules in classical music, those rules are not set in stone and should be pushed and challenged in the name of creativity.