BOOKMARKS FROM JAPAN (The Great Wave Off Kanagawa – Hakone)

Julie Giroux's Fourth Symphony, "Bookmarks from Japan", is a piece of major complexity for the Concert Bands due to its six movements that can be independently interpreted. It was premiered in 2013 in Japan by the Musashino Academy of Music Wind Ensemble, conducted by Ray E. Cramer and based around six historical Japanese hand-painted scenes, of which two are brought to life through music.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa
Hokusai's work "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (1830 and 1833) is known throughout the world as forming part of the series entitled "Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji". It is his most renowned work in which we can see Mount Fuji in the background, though with the focal point of the monstrous wave named Okinami (open sea wave). In this work the wave's onset in open sea is represented, somewhat calm still, with refractory solar rays, bathed in sunlight and its growing power taking the form of undulating winds sweeping upwards and downwards to create the first signs of the great wave, until its agonic ending on the rocky beach that marks the end of its journey.

Hakone
Based on the scene entitled "Hakone" by Hiroshige Ando, from the series of woodcut prints named "The Fifty-Three Stations of the T?kaid?", that represent the 53 post stations on the road running from Tokaido in Edo to Kyoto in 1832, on a route along which horses were transported that were offered as gifts to the Imperial Court. In these post stations, nourishment, accommodation and stables were offered to travellers on the Tokaido Motorway.