Violist and composer Kenji Bunch grew up in Portland, Oregon, studied at the Juilliard School where he now teaches, lives in New York and is a veteran performer and teacher with the Craftsbury Chamber Players.
Of his latest composition to be performed by the Chamber Players, he writes: "Paraphraseology reflects my interest in cultural and historical paradox. Today's concert music world presents us with a remarkable combination of old, new, East, West, high, low, and so on. I wanted to celebrate the fact that simply through the aural persuasion of music, it's possible to erase any need to justify or explain the mixing of cultures, timelines, or traditions. We find a similar phenomenon in language. Latin, like Western classical music, enjoys a posthumous influence on many languages succeeding it- a foundation for most modern European tongues. In today's English we still throw around Latin cliches, quotes, and intimidating legal terms on a regular basis. No one really questions the use of these anachronistic terms instead of their modern translations; they simply "sound right." I decided the made-up word Paraphraseology sounded right as the title for my cheerful celebration of the incongruous. Paraphrase means literally "in other words" and phraseology "the choice of words." Therefore this amalgam suggests "the choice of other words." The work is in six short movements that are played without pause. It was written for marimbist Makoto Nakura, who premiered it with violinist Stefan Milenkovich in 2000, and joined the Craftsbury Chamber Players to perform it in 2004."
-- Kendall Durelle Briggs
