Composer in Residence

KOIDE Noriko

Noriko KOIDE (b.1982, Chiba) obtained her master’s degree in composition from Tokyo College of Music (2008), Conservatorium van Amsterdam (2011), and Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag (2014) with the grants from the Rohm Music Foundation (2009-13), Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag (2012-2013), and the Overseas Study Program for Artists provided by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan (2013-14). She has been interested in the methods of note decoration used in traditional Javanese Gamelan music, and studied Gamelan performance and its theory at the Institut Seni Indonesia Surakarta, with the grants given by the Darmasiswa Indonesian Scholarship Program, and the Nomura Foundation in 2014-15. She studied under Shin-ichiro Ikebe, Sunao Isaji, Masao Endo, Shin Satoh, Yutaka Fujiwara, Akira Fukuda, Toshio Hosokawa, Wim Henderickx, Martijn Padding, and Yannis Kyriakides.

She has won the Akutagawa Award for Music Composition (2007) with her Keselanpatharan for orchestra. She has also received: the Audience Award, and placed second in the 76th Music Competition of Japan, 18th Idemitsu Music Award, and Arion Prize. In the Tongyeong International Music Festival 2016, she has won Asian Composers Showcase’s Goethe-Award and its Audience Award with her Hotei which was premiered there. She has been commissioned by Hiroshima Opera Music Promotion Committee and the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra. Her works have been performed and featured by: the New Japan Philharmonic and many other domestic orchestras, Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Tokyo Philharmonic Chorus, Vox humana, Ensemble Genesis, Hiroaki Ooi, Yasuji Ohagi, Kousei Murata, Sumire Yoshihara, Takefu International Music Festival, International Gaudeamus Music Week (Utrecht), Shanghai New Music Week, Music From Japan Festival (New York), Toonzetters (Amsterdam), TV programs for TV Asahi, and NHK Educational, and NHK-FM Gendai no Ongaku (Music of today). In 2020, she was featured as an invited composer at the Music From Japan Festival in New York and several works including the premiered piece, Bishamon were introduced.

She is currently a member of an avant-garde pop duo, Kishibojin Fumin Girls, and a multi-dimensional art group project that focuses on eroticism, Sukebeningen. In recent years, she has been working as a member of the Doubutsu Ongakutai, a group of professional musicians and choreographers active in and outside of Japan who work together to create and present innovative performing arts for children at the highest level.

Though she uses various compositional styles depending on the theme of each work, her works can be characterized by the textures and colours formed by the resonance of innovative orchestration, fine musical shapes, and extended techniques. Her recent works include In Southern Rain for orchestra (2018) and Jamtic Jamtac for percussion quartet (2016). In October 2022, the new work Swaddling Silks and Gossamer Rain commissioned by BBC Radio 3 will be premiered by BBC Symphony Orchestra.