First Commission

I have commissioned my first percussion work from a 4th year composition student at Toho Gakuen. His name is Hideto Arai, and I heard a work of his called "Imaginary Dancer" for quintet at a concert the other night. I loved it. It was a quirky piece, with humour in it, but also depth. I had a talk with Mr Arai after the concert, and managed to communicate that I had enjoyed his piece. I asked one of the percussion boys at Toho to help me translate so that I could ask Hideto to write me a piece for solo vibraphone. Sho, my translator, said that Hideto was thrilled to write a piece for me, and loves the sound of this instrument. Sho has played some of Hideto's works before and said he finds his works really interesting. We talked about what it is to perform another person's work, and expressed similar feelings that one must remove one's ego to do the composer justice. I look forward to seeing what Mr Arai writes for me.