Makiko Nishikaze

---

aqua ּ piano ּ aerial
Order Reference:	EWR 0301
Medium:	CD
Composer:	Makiko Nishikaze
Performer:	Makiko Nishikaze, Piano
“Sanctuary.“ Whenever I spoke with Makiko Nishikaze, this word played an important role.
To me, it seems typical of our culture that our language cannot really express what she means when she uses this word. We have a sanctuary for birds. There is also a convention, whereby no one should be arrested when they are sheltered by the church. But the protection of a center within ourselves, where thinking and acting, necessity and freedom, feeling, longing and doing, meet. – We, in the West, don’t have a concept for that. At the same time this center is so easily lost: through the demands we think we have to make on ourselves; through others, who think they are allowed to make demands on us; through our dedication to tasks that make us lose contact with ourselves.
The first time I heard Makiko Nishikaze talk about her music, she compared the process of composing to a river, finding its way. Whenever she comes upon a new sound, she goes back in her mind once more to the very beginning of the composition, and then traces its course forward to that point. Arriving at a new tone, she asks it whether it likes the place it is in. If not, she takes it away, and tries to find a new way for the piece to flow.
One can imagine how much time it takes to write a piece that lasts about an hour.
However, the flow of her music is as inevitable as water flowing downwards. It is as if it flows through a center, that is constantly changing its location, in view of the many questions and tensions that arise, and which has to be searched for and found, again and again.
Doris Kösterke