East Meets West: Duo YUMENO Concerts at Greenwich Historical Society

The Greenwich Historical Society will offer two performances by Duo YUMENO on Tuesday, October 18, 2016. Composing original arrangements and commissioned works, New York-based Duo YUMENO offers a unique fusion of sound that explores both traditional Japanese and Western classical music. Musicologist Ralph Samuelson has described them as “superb musicians moving along the same path, one which does not distinguish East or West but simply brings two beautiful string instruments of the world together seamlessly.”

Hikaru Tamaki is an accomplished cellist, while Yoko Reikano Kimura sings and plays the koto (a Japanese zither about six feet long, with 13 silk strings) and the shamisen (a three-stringed lute with a square body, played with a plectrum). The pair recently completed a four-year performance project that included an annually commissioned work by the American composer Marty Regan. They have been enthusiastically received in diverse locales from New York and Chicago to Tokyo, Turkey, Trinidad and Tobago.

Duo YUMENO received the Janet Latz Professional Fellowship in 2011, a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program Grant in 2014 and the Aoyama Baroque Saal Award in 2015. Their first CD, Flowers, Birds, Wind, Moon, was released in May 2015 and will be available for purchase.

Performances will take place at 4:00 and 7:00 pm and are being held in conjunction with the Historical Society’s new show, An Eye to the East: The Inspiration of Japan at the Storehouse Gallery. The gallery will be open one hour before each performance, and admission is free with a concert ticket purchase.