Ways to communicate

Tomoko has several perspectives about communication. Tomoko claims, “Communication is closer if you know the context.” Here are some of those contexts.

“When I arrived in America I didn’t know much English. If people said bad things about me, I didn’t know. That’s how I survived.”

“I don’t tell people that I am a pianist – then I am on the job instead.” On the other hand, Tomoko says, “Several friends of mine are teachers at the Conservatory where we talk together at lunch.”

Talking is important to Tomoko when she teaches. When students just need confidence, Tomoko tells her students, “You can make it.” She will also trick them by saying, “I was worse than you.”

For Tomoko, “Music is conversation. It is a sentence. It is a language.” 

This interaction is special during a performance. Tomoko ponders: “What is the communication between performers and audience? Mysterious.”

She states, “Performance is conversation that is thrown to the audience.” More specifically, Tomoko asserts, “Expression in musical performance communicates.” She also muses, “I hope the audience gets it. I can’t control how they feel.”

It is clear, though, that Tomoko’s music is very articulate.

The Power of Composers

“Composers have special power,” contends Tomoko. They express feelings and ideas through the language of music, “just as an author creates through the language of words.” Those composers each represent different lives and ways of thinking. Tomoko continues, “Behind the composing is the philosophy of the composer. And that philosophy does not change.” It is the identity, the integrity, of the composer. “They have their idea what is best for them,” assert Tomoko.

  

Where does this power originate? “ I feel sorry for them because they can’t explain their creative power,” says Tomoko. Even though the tools are the same, the results are unique. What makes a note the right one? How does a phrase convey thought? How does the music’s movement rise above the score it is written on? “You have to respect every composer,” Tomoko explains. “Composition is hard work. Each composer creates a unique sound and interpretation. It’s very complicated.” Tomoko maintains that “They are tough guys.”

But composing is more than text. It is more than one-way communication. It is a conversation.  

Composers resonate with its performers and the audience. The music rings straight to the heart, and the sound created by the composer reverberates throughout the body and the soul: both in its performance and in listening to it.

And that music can empower the performer and the listener. It adds value to their lives and makes them better people. Music unites the composer and the audience, and brings out their best selves at the same time that it affirms a sense of belonging with each other and with higher powers.

It is no wonder that Tomoko believes that “composers are guardian angels.”

The Dynamic Tension of Music

Music opens the mind, the heart, and the soul. Yet at the same time, music demands parameters. Its is both open and closed, external and internal.

“To play well you need to be open to the music,” says Tomoko. “What is the composer trying to say? What is the composer thinking and feeling?” Tomoko says.

As a pianist, you access the music with your eyes. Then you internalize that music, informed by the composer’s intent. Tomoko shares her knowledge about these musicians to help her students understand the music’s origin and its context. She reminds her students, “Be true to the composer”; they are working with a closed set of musical notation. Finally, as a pianist, you externalize that composition through your body: your mind and heart flow through your arms, your fingers, even your feet. Such attention to the structure and dynamics of music leads to its ultimate freedom of expression.

Those same openness applies to the audience. They experience the music with their whole body: eyes, ears, even the felt rhythm and beat of the music can reverberate through the body. That music touches the person internally in the head and heart.

How can a limited set of tones, performed in sequence, lead to seemingly limitless variations and musical experiences? Tomoko would say that it is the miracle of the composers’ openness to musical possibilities – and the disciplined use of musical form to express internal inspiration to compose a new reality for others to enjoy.