Austin Symphonic Band Performing Machu Picchu–City in the Sky
Austin Symphonic Band. November 5, 2023 concert at the Connally HS Performing Arts Center in Austin, TX. ASB performing Machu Picchu–City in the Sky by Satoshi Yagisawa. [NOTE: Click 'more' to read the program notes.] Music Director Dr. Kyle R. Glaser conducting. "Grand Structures" Concert.
Video and Sound Production: Eddie Jennings
From the program notes written by David Cross:
Machu Picchu–City in the Sky (2004)
Satoshi Yagisawa (b. 1975)
Program note by the composer:
Explaining the significance of Machu Picchu begins with remembering the Incan empire at its zenith, and its tragic encounter with the Spanish conquistadors. The great 16th century empire that unified most of Andean South America had as its capital the golden city of Cuzco. Francisco Pizarro, while stripping the city of massive quantities of gold, in 1533 also destroyed Cuzco’s Sun Temple, shrine of the founding deity of the Incan civilization.
While that act symbolized the end of the empire, 378 years later an archaeologist from Yale University, Hiram Bingham, rediscovered “Machu Picchu,” a glorious mountaintop Incan city that had escaped the attention of the invaders. At the central high point of the city stands its most important shrine, the Intihuatana, or “hitching post of the sun,” a column of stone rising from a block of granite the size of a grand piano, where a priest would “tie the sun to the stone” at winter solstice to ensure its seasonal return. Finding the last remaining Sun Temple of a great city inspired the belief that perhaps the royal lineage stole away to his holy place during Pizarro’s conquest.
After considering these remarkable ideas, I wished to musically describe that magnificent citadel and trace some of the mysteries sealed in Machu Picchu’s past. Three principal ideas dominate the piece: (1) the shimmering golden city of Cuzco set in the dramatic scenery of the Andes, (2) the destructiveness of violent invasion, and (3) the re-emergence of Incan glory as the City in the Sky again reached for the sun.
---
Satoshi Yagisawa is a Japanese composer who graduated from the Department of Composition at Musashino Academia Musicae, and later completed master’s coursework at the graduate school of Musashino Academia Musicae. He studied composition under Kenjiro Urata, Hitoshi Tanaka, and Hidehiko Hagiwaya, in addition to studying trumpet under Takeji Sekine and band instruction under Masato Sato.
Other professional activities include festival adjudication, guest conducting, teaching, lecturing, writing columns for music magazines and advisory work for a music publisher. He is one of the most energetic young composers in Japan today. Currently he teaches wind, string, and percussion instruments at Tokyo Music & Media Arts, Shobi. He is also a member of “Kyo-En”, an organization that premieres outstanding original works by Japanese composers.
Listen for:
• A “kitchen-sink” of rhythmic motives in the opening.
• Birds chirping in the first main theme.
• A percussion interlude leading to the ferocious second theme.
• A calm woodwind interlude.
• A return to the ferocious theme, this time with heroic horns.
• A grandiose recap of the first theme.
