Mayu Hirano
*21 December 1979
Works by Mayu Hirano
Biography
Mayu Hirano, Japanese composer as well as sonic sculptor and sonic painter born in Yokohama, lives and works in Paris since 2003. After obtaining the diploma with violin as the main discipline in the music department at Kitakamakura Joshigakuen Junior and Senior High School, Mayu Hirano studies at the Tokyo University of the Arts (Tokyo Geidai), under Genichi Tsuge in musicology, Hinoharu Matsumoto for harmony, and Yoshio Unno for violin.
She starts the research in composition largely through autodidacte, first in electronic music before returning to instrumental music. In 2003, she obtained her degree in musicology with a thesis entitled "Physical Experience and Repetitive Music." In 2008, she studied improvisation technique in jazz violin with Didier Lockwood. From then on, she studied composition at the Conservatoire de Boulogne with Jean-Luc Hervé and Yan Maresz. She received the Sacem prize in 2012 and the music diploma in 2013.
In 2013-2015, she joined the Cursus in composition and computer music at IRCAM, where she created Instant Suspendu for accordion and electronics, in diptych with Singularité, for accordion, string quartet, electronics and video, composed for Cursus 2. These pieces explore the perception of time as a sensation and the question of the moment and suspended time, creating an illusion of eternity that summons the temporal infinity by the stretching of the moment through electronics. During these years she was also taught composition with Beat Furrer, Brian Ferneyhough and Chaya Czernowin.
About the music
For Mayu Hirano, music is before all a matter of sensory perception, an evolutionary system of memory, and threshold of human perception. These three elements gave rise to important developments in her music.
Parfum d'un Autre Monde (Parfume of Another World, 2024, premiered at Philharmonie de Paris, Ensemble Intercontemporain) for viola and electronics, evoking a sensory journey inspired by a piece from Noh, Hagoromo (The Feather Mantle), using a typical sound spacialization for creating a sensation of fluctuation of the sound mist, like an ethereal element which diffuses in the air in the manner of perfume through the image of a luxuriant nature which is reflected in the iridescent water, evoking the metamorphosis of the instrumental gesture. Toucher (2018) for solo piano, is based on different forms of touch on the keyboard; piece presented on Le Cri du Patchwork, Radio France by Hugues Dufour, composer and philosopher, as one of the composers succeeding in the spectral music of Gérard Grisey, in raising the originality of the musical form of Toucher and the notion of time peculiar to the piece.
If Mayu Hirano often compares her work to a sculpture of time and space, it also brings the nature of sound and light, both of which can be declined in spectra. To these references, omnipresent in the sensual nature of her music, were added data specific to cinema in the score she designed for Une Page Folle (A page of madness), premiered on 4 June 2021 at the Centre Pompidou, silent film realized in 1926 by Teinosuke Kinugasa, questioning the traditional conception of the film music. Between dream and reality, the quivering music is one with the pulsions highlighted by the oscillating projection of the film; it tints the nuances in counterpoint.
Mayu Hirano receives commissions from major musical institutions and international festivals including Radio France, Ars Musica, Art Zoyd studio, Ircam, Centre Pompidou, Festival de l’Intemporel Tokyo and Ensemble InterContemporain. Her works are performed by the ensembles Le Balcon (FR), Talea New York(US), Ensemble Court-Circuit (FR) and EIC (FR).
She is currently working on a commission for the Ensemble Court-Circuit for ensemble for Création Mondiale on France Musique.
Her works have been published by Universal Edition (Wien) since 2021.
Film Music at The Centre Pompidou - Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou
Une Page Folle (2021)
Co-Commissioned by IRCAM co-production/Musée d'art Modern Centre Pompidou
Interview with Mayu Hirano : Sculpt the space of the film
https://brahms.ircam.fr/fr/documents/document/21596/
Music Extracts
