by Stephanie Manning
Ask Haruka Fujii what instrument she plays, and she won’t be able to tell you exactly.
“I play anything that makes noise,” the percussionist says. “Anything that I can make music with—including pure water, to ceramic rice bowls, to anything.”
A specialist in contemporary music, Fujii says she focuses on working with living composers to “innovate and invent the boundary of what the percussionist can do.” Since 2010, she’s been doing just that as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble, a musical collective dedicated to cross-cultural collaboration.
On April 26, she’ll be coming to Oberlin for the first time, as part of the group performing Silkroad’s program “Uplifted Voices.” Tickets are available online.
On Thursday, May 28 at Masonic Auditorium, CityMusic Cleveland, under the direction of Avner Dorman, presented the first of two performances featuring a percussion concerto on the first half and a selection of show tunes on the second. What do these two musical styles have in common? Perhaps nothing, but in the words of Duke Ellington, “if it sounds good it IS good,” and from beginning to end, this was one good concert. The performance was presented as part of CityMusic’s “Wishes and Dreams: A Homeless Children Project.” 