Sound and Music’s In Motion programme brings together a diverse group of composers, each with a unique voice and vision. This Q&A series offers a glimpse into their creative worlds, revealing their musical influences, current projects, and aspirations for the future.

Here, we speak to In Motion 2024 composer Chihiro Ono.

Can you tell us about your musical influences?

I have strong vision on music, and see image and colours on sounds and music.

Making my piece is based on a architectural process, build the individual sounds into a form to tell a story to the listeners.

My curious wonders are…the microtones on Persian, Medieval and Japanese music, the general knowledge on Japanese traditions and folklore such as Ainu and Bunraku, the roots of languages, the theatrical movement by Brecht, and the Chaos and String theory in Physics etc etc…Also I have been fascinating and collecting things on folklore materials since / around the age of 6.

Understanding the roots of things are one of my main topic in my life, and in music it made me singing “their hearted-voice” freely in classical music.

Merging that tool with Western and Eastern tradition and folklore, my voice (violin and viola) and my curious wonders (above) are always the base for my creation.

What are you working on at the moment?

I am working on several different things as a violinist and violist in Performing Arts on everyday basis. For example while practising the composed pieces by various composers to do concerts with Ensemble Modern in DE and US next week, I had a performance on experimental outdoor performance as a member of ARCO, and a performance at Cafe Oto as a member of Apartment House, and between the times have done some workshop days for young composers at the RHUL, GSMD and LSO composer + and the Alternative conservatory (a new project by Joel Bell).

What are you looking forward to most about In Motion?