Arcady festival highlights influence of Asian music

Often when Masanobu Ikemiya, artistic director of Arcady Music Festival, talks about cultural exchanges, he’s referring to his own experience of being a Japanese pianist who jams on ragtime music and is wild about the American composer George Gershwin. During 21 years of running the festival, he has come to be known as a Gershwin-aholic. Say he’s talking about Gershwin in a phone conversation, it’s very likely he’ll go to the piano and break into a piece. And if you simply ask him about the American composer, he’ll for sure say: “Oh! Gershwin! He’s marvelous! He’s the best! He’s my favorite!”

This summer, Ikemiya has a new cultural exchange plan, and he’s making exclamations all over again. “It’s incredible!” he said on a recent Sunday during a phone call between rehearsals.

Ikemiya was speaking about this week’s concerts for which he will be joined by three string players from the New York Philharmonic and Music from China, a New York-based quintet that performs on traditional instruments. The idea behind the program is to trace the influence of Eastern music on Western composers, especially after the Paris Exposition of 1889, which featured a pavilion of Asian culture.

Claude Debussy, Giacomo Puccini and the operetta team of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan all heard Eastern music during these years, and the sound had a far-reaching influence on each of them. For Puccini, it led to “Madama Butterfly.” For Gilbert and Sullivan, it was “The Mikado.” And in 1903, Debussy wrote the piano music “Estampes,” a segment of which will be performed at the upcoming concerts.

“Debussy heard the music at the Chinese Pavilion and went crazy,” said Ikemiya. “It was a completely different concept about music. It wasn’t the German late-romanticism. It was a whole different culture and it was eye-opening and refreshing.”

The program at the East-meets-West Arcady concert will alternate between the New York Philharmonic playing Western pieces – by Debussy, Fritz Kreisler and Gabriel Faure – and Music from China playing Eastern pieces such as the ancient “A Moonlit River in Spring” and the contemporary “Moon Over Fortified Path.” During the Maine visit, the ensemble will include daruan (bass guitar), dizi (bamboo flute), pipa (lute), erhu (two-string fiddle) and yangqin (hammered dulcimer).

“Our music is quite close to chamber music,” said Susan Cheng, executive director of Music from China, which was founded in 1984. “It’s so fun to put music side by side and compare how the same ideas are expressed artistically. It’s a great adventure.”

Part of the adventure in Maine will be when the groups combine to play Gershwin’s “Chinese Variation” from “I Got Rhythm Variations,” which Ikemiya arranged for these performances.

“It sounds even better than with a whole orchestra,” said Ikemiya. “I think this is what Gershwin had in mind. When I asked the Music from China musicians about playing Gershwin, they went wild.”

But Ikemiya knows there’s also a hefty undercurrent to any current concert featuring the East and the West. Given political terseness in recent years between China and the United States, he hopes that music will carry a banner of friendship and understanding.

“Music is more powerful than politicians,” said Ikemiya, who was born to Japanese missionaries working in China and then grew up in Kyoto. “It goes right to the heart of people. This is perfect timing because we need to understand China better and vice versa. I really believe in world music. That’s an element of Arcady – ethnic music in a chamber setting. We need to be aware of other forms of chamber music in the world. This concert is an attempt for the East to meet the West and to see how they’ve influenced each other and benefited from each other.”

Arcady Music Festival will present Members of the New York Philharmonic and Music from China at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 20 at Unitarian Universalist Church in Bangor, 7 p.m. Aug. 21 at Blair Hill Inn in Greenville, 7 p.m. Aug. 22 at the Alamo Theater in Bucksport, and 8 p.m. at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Bar Harbor. For tickets and information, call 288-2141 or 288-9500.