Installation

The Voice of Inconstant Savage
Commissioned for the Engawa – Japanese Contemporary Art Season programme organized by Calouste Gulbenkian Museum's Modern Art Center, The Voice of Inconstant Savage is an immersive installation that superimposes a prayer inspired by the story of a 16th-century Portuguese missionary, a chant from a Kakure-Kirishitan (hidden Christians) prayer – a religion rooted in Nagasaki Prefecture –, a chant from the Karawara spirits of the Awá indigenous people – who live in the Amazon rainforest – and a chorus of Western Gregorian chant. Morinaga questions the position of the aesthetics of inconstancy in relation to the discourse of the “savage” that modern society confronts.

Field recordings

Sombat Simla: Master Of Bamboo Mouth Organ
Simla is known in Thailand as one of the greatest living players of the khene, the ancient bamboo mouth organ particularly associated with Laos but found throughout East and Southeast Asia. His virtuosic and endlessly inventive renditions of traditional and popular songs have earned him the title ‘the god of khene’, and he is known for his innovative techniques and ability to mimic other instruments and non-musical sound, including, as a writer for the Bangkok Post describes, ‘the sound of a train journey, complete with traffic crossings and the call of barbecue chicken vendors’.

Outland ethnologies

Thang Mo by Ngoc Dai [Vietnam]
Ngọc Đại is one of the most influential composers in contemporary music in Vietnam. Due to the socio-political and sexual lyrics, the original album was prohibited by government to release in Vietnam. This album presents the Dai's unique singing style, evoking the northern Vietnamese folksong, composition based on the chanson music. Ngọc Đại was born in 1946 in Vietnam. He studied composition in Hanoi Conservatory from 1977 to 1983 but soon decided to leave the national communist system and live as a true independent artist and is probably the only socially and politically committed composer in Vietnam and he has also been recently convicted by the Vietnamese Authorities for being a counter-revolutionary artist when his last album was released.

Concert

A Widow in Batavia
『A Widow in Batavia(バタヴィアの未亡人) 』は、17世紀に長崎で生まれた日蘭混血女性のコルネリア・ファン・ネイエンローデ (Cornelia van Nijenroode)をテーマに大航海時代のアジア島嶼部と現代文化の関係を探る音を扱ったコンサート作品です。本作品は環境音や楽器音そして電子音を駆使しながら、異なる世界の変化を同時に操作していくもので、立体音響技術による特殊音場を取り入れライブ演奏と融合していくものです。 本コンサートは、大航海時代のアジア島嶼の各地で使用された数々のテクストを土台に、その時代性を描写している箇所が多くあります。日本や東南アジアで使用されていた「じゃがたら文」「オラショ」「パントゥン(Pantun)」といった異なるテクストを全体の連続した時間の中で扱い、マルチプルな世界観を束ねてゆく試みです。この世界観を創出するために電子音や環境音を立体音場の装置の中で展開させ、西洋楽器やインドネシア楽器を取り入れることで、音や音楽の異なる世界観を重層的に展開してゆく作品として創作したものです。