UC Irvine

The emerging field of practitioner-centered music theory and composition invites the performer’s body, identity, and aesthetics to become a vital component of musical analysis. My creative practice as a Japanese-American violinist-composer reimagines bow arm gestures through Japanese storytelling art forms such as Nihon-Buyō, Haiku, and Kamishibai to perform autoethnographic memories and stories as a form of creative insight. Narrative arm gestures from my childhood studies of Nihon-Buyō, utilize props such as a sensu (Fan), kasa (Umbrella), or simply the furisode (Long Sleeve of a Kimono) to allude to a butterfly, falling snow, or the presence of moonlight, informing my violin bow arm gestures to carry multidimensional, semiotic meanings. Combining the narrative arm gestures endemic to Nihon-Buyō with classical violin bow techniques, new epistemologies of bow arm gestures emerge. Serving not only as a fundamental element to desired sound production but also as a visual component of performance, the violinist’s bow arm gestures function as a method of communication, artistic expression, motif, motion data, and dramaturgy. Arm gestures in my creative musical works aim to evoke a scene, which is a principle found in many aspects of Japanese culture, most notably the poetic device of Kigo (seasonal words) in Haiku. The violinist’s body also becomes a “Musical Personae,” as Philip Auslander describes, which can be further reframed to reimagine the violinist as a storyteller. In this way, the performing violinist’s totality of sound, visuals, and body movements all support the narrative, parallel to the practice of a Kamishibai-ya. Through practice-based research, these Japanese narrative art traditions inform a vocabulary of bow-arm movements capable of evoking scenic imagery and autobiographical memory. Presented through a narrative framework, this research positions multimedia violin performance as a space in which lived experience functions as a critical source of knowledge. Chapter One details the backgrounds of my practitioner-centered research, of American classical violin bow arm techniques, and Japanese narrative art forms. Chapter Two analyzes a survey of performer-composers who engage with the performing body as multimedia expression, such as in works by Natacha Diels, enhancing a string player’s bow gestures through technology, such as in works by Simon Steen-Anderson and Mari Kimura, and immersing audiences into personal storytelling performances, such as in works by Kishi Bashi and Jennifer Walshe. Chapter Three synthesizes this research through narrative theory, improvisation, and technology to create new compositional and performance methods, exemplified through my original compositions. This chapter also analyzes the Dissertation Concert as a larger autoethnographic performance, cultivating a reciprocal performer-audience relationship through Chatman’s theory of narrative communication.