OJP082 : Ken Ueno / Sonic Calligraphies I - V
Five long tracks from Ken using only his voice, a megaphone and the sound of an inside old tank. Approaching the lightness of the air...
Ken says:
"In October 2018, at the invitation of Leilehua Lanzilotti, I performed at the TANK Center for the Sonic Arts, in Rangely, Colorado. It is a unique and mystical space – originally built around 1940 as a railroad water-treatment tank, this seven-story Corten steel structure was relocated to Rangely in the 1960s for a fire-suppression system. However, the shale foundation couldn’t support its weight, leaving the tank unused—but the bowed floor created remarkable acoustics. In 1976, sound artist Bruce Odland discovered its extraordinary reverberation, and it quietly became a secret haven for experimental musicians.
Being a metal tank with a high ceiling, the space offered a uniquely resonant performance environment for me and my megaphone. My shaped-feedback tones sustained so long that I could fade in and layer new tones over decaying ones, each with staggered half-lives. It felt like painting with watercolors—tones blending and bleeding into one another, then being absorbed into the sonic canvas.
The space itself became the instrument, and I was both inside it and a part of it. I shaped vowel-like gestures within my mouth to articulate specific frequencies, and because these physical gestures within my mouth were vowel-like (though these shapes don’t belong to a specific language), I had the sensation that the relationship between these gestures and the resultant sounds were like Cy Twombly’s lines - gestures that play between the liminalities of gesture, and calligraphy – Sonic Calligraphies I-V."
A Rome Prize and Berlin Prize winner, Ken Ueno is a composer, performer, sound artist, and scholar. Leading performers and ensembles worldwide have championed his music. His piece Shiroi Ishi, written for the Hilliard Ensemble, remained in their repertoire for over a decade, with performances at venues such as Queen Elizabeth Hall in London and the Vienna Konzerthaus, and was broadcast on Italian national radio, RAI 3. Another work, Pharmakon, was performed nationally dozens of times by Eighth Blackbird during their 2001–2003 seasons. A portrait concert of Ueno’s work was featured at MaerzMusik in Berlin in 2011.
As a vocalist, Ueno is known for his bespoke extended techniques and has performed his vocal concerto with major orchestras including the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Warsaw Philharmonic, and Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ikue Mori, and Du Yun, and maintains ongoing projects with artists such as Kung Chi Shing, Viola Yip, Matt Ingalls, and Karen Yu.
Ueno’s sound art installations have been exhibited internationally, including at Art Basel, the Taipei Museum of Modern Art, and the New Vision Arts Festival. His large-scale work Daedalus Drones, a fence-labyrinth with a nest of flying drones, premiered at the Asia Society Hong Kong in 2021. In 2024, he was a featured artist at Noise Fest, curated by the West Kowloon Cultural District, and the featured guest composer at the Takefu International Music Festival, where the Arditti String Quartet premiered his string quartet, alongside a chamber concerto for bass recorder performed by Tosiya Suzuki. A 2025 highlight was his appearance at the A Bunch of Noise festival in Shanghai.
Ueno is currently a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His writings have appeared in the Oxford Handbook, The New York Times, Palgrave Macmillan, The Drama Review (TDR), Ethics Press, and Wiley & Sons. His bio is included in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. www.kenueno.com
Recorded at TANK Center for Sonic Arts by recording engineer Greg Heimbecker and assistant recording engineer Samantha Wade. Mixed by Anthony Yeung Ngor Wah.
Cover art by Kei Kei
Composed and performed by Ken Ueno (extended voice with megaphone).
Digital release on the 20th of June 2025.
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