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1. Today -Two players on one marimba 4’
Today was composed in spring 2024 as part of Songs for Ishikawa — a suite created to uplift the people and land of Ishikawa after the devastating New Year’s Day earthquake that caused great loss across the peninsula. The music also emerged amid the escalating Gaza–Israel conflict and as Haruka’s father, Akira Fujii, battled cancer. Today became an anthem of courage, dedicated to all who face life and death each day, and to those who stand beside them.
2. Sunatoribushi - Marimba and vibraphone 4.5’
Designated as an Intangible Cultural Property of Ishikawa Prefecture, this folk song is a precious cultural asset now facing the challenge of being passed on to future generations amid Japan’s ongoing depopulation. The catastrophic earthquake has placed the song at even greater risk of fading into history.
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~ A Collage; the Views of SFGC Singers, February 2024
Commissioned by the San Francisco Girls Chorus
In February 2024, I received survey responses from over a dozen of San Francisco Girls Chorus artists, answering two questions I asked. Q1. What are the words that come to your mind when you think about the state of the world we live in today? Q2. What do you want the adults in your world to do to make your future brighter?
Their words, expressing their views, frustrations, anger, and hopes, were painfully raw and pure, and ever so inspiring that it did not require much time to come up with the music to accompany their beautiful emotions. These young artists’ perspectives, and the process of creating this work has given me hope for my ten-year old daughter’s future. With much gratitude and respect for the San Francisco Girls Choir.
I. Fear
Dareno chikyu (whose globe) Korewa dareno chikyu (whose globe is this)
It’s changing. It’s evolving. Echoing. Circulating. Moving.
It’s moving, too fast
It’s confusing. It’s divided. It’s isolated. It’s scary.
I fear
I weep
I weep silently for the world is a cruel placeII. Chaos
Dareno chikyu (whose globe) Anatano chikyu? (your globe)
Activism. Social media. Addiction. People-pleasing. Self-serving. Failing system.
Mistreated nature. Pollution. Deforestation. A dying planet.
Chaos
This is a planet we will be left with
YOU messed upIII. Listen
Dareno chikyu (whose globe) Watashino chikyu? (my globe)
It’s changing. It’s evolving. Creating. Innovating. Learning. Trying.
Please guide us without judgement
Please help us understand our place in the world
Slow down and listen
Listen to me
Listen to us
Listen to music, so you can understand how to listen to each other
Our world is much more beautiful than we give it credit for
Our world is much more beautiful than we give it credit forDareno chikyu, (whose globe) Watashitachino chikyu (our globe)
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6’
As a musical practice, ‘Improvisation’ always felt foreign to me. But in recent years, through the collaboration with some gifted musicians, I’ve come to perceive it as a kind of conversation conducted with sounds. This piece emerged from a curiosity about what kind of musical landscape would result if sisters were to have a “small chat” through improvisation, using objects that blend into daily life such as rice bowls and chopsticks, as if those sounds were words.” Small Chat was written in 2023 for Utari Percussion duo (Haruka and Rika Fuji).
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11’
Divisions is a composition project I started in 2017, driven by the urge to musically articulate my personal observations of events unfolding within personal and societal – both local and global - relationships. The piece is a weaving of different textures and resonance that sometimes conflict, and other times harmonize. The final movement depicts the force of our sphere that keeps rotating, regardless of the divisions that may rise in life and the world.
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11’
Premiered in June 2025 by Del Sol Quartet and Haruka Fujii
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8’
Haruka Fujii and Sandeep Das
Saraswati is a multimedia project created in response to the 2021 fall of Kabul, funded by Silkroad’s “Seeds” program. This collaboration features a performance by Silkroad artists Sandeep Das (Tabla) and Haruka Fujii (Percussion), alongside a short story created by Afghan poet Homeira Qaderi.
The composition follows a short story written by Homeira that follows Mahjabeen, a young Afghan girl who serendipitously discovers the metamorphosis of the Indian Vedic goddess Saraswati over time. Alongside her friends, Mahjabeen discovers the goddess’ connection to the legends of the Arghandab River and the Japanese goddess Benzaiten. This performance invites the audience to reflect on Saraswati’s journey across India, Afghanistan, and Japan, exploring the evolving, yet interconnected, nature of cultures and highlighting the power of music and mythology to unite humanity across time and space.
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7’
Conversations 2020 is a composition for a virtual family collaboration project during the pandemic lockdown in the summer of 2020, with an intention to cheer up and unite my family, residing in different parts of the world. The performers of the projected included three generations of family member percussionists. Inspired by both renowned marimba solo work of Akira Miyoshi’s Conversation and the traditional music style of the Kawagoe Festival in Japan. I would like to dedicate this composition to everyone who is walking through the year 2020 and beyond.
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7.5’
Everytime I listen to or perform with the clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, I receive a kind of inspiration I have never known before—drawn from both his personality that is deep compassion and humanity and his music that speaks of it. Decades have passed since Kinan left his hometown of Damascus, Syria, and settled in New York. His stories and beauty of the sound he creates seems to speak directly to every listener, asking what music can do. Drawing on several ideas from his composition Scattered Sketchbook, I explored ways of threading his melodies, stories and inspirations into my sonic landscape.
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5’
Symphony in Grey was originally commissioned in 2018 by the National Museum of Asian Art as part of Silkroad’s Pictures at an Exhibition project. The piece is inspired by the oil painting Symphony in Grey: Early Morning, Thames by American artist James McNeill Whistler, whose imagery strikingly resembled the view from my airplane as I departed San Francisco for a Silkroad Ensemble residency at the museum in December 2017. It was the morning, one week after the Northern California wildfires.
As the plane took off from San Francisco International Airport, the Bay Area below was entirely shrouded in dark grey smoke. The ascent carried the aircraft into a thick, heavy layer of haze hovering above the city, before suddenly breaking through into a radiant, sunlit expanse above the clouds. The piece reflects this progression of visual experience, moving from obscurity and darkness into a moment of sudden release and transcendence.
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6’
Shingashi Song was originally written for my grandparents, who used to live in the area near the Shingashi River in Saitama, Japan, and where I spent a great amount of my childhood. The piece contains each of their favorite Japanese folk songs: Mari To Tonosama, my grandmother's favorite children’s bouncing ball song, and Esashi Oiwake which is a fisherman’s song from my grandfather’s hometown, Hokkaido. This fisherman's song describes a harsh life up in the northern tip of Japan, where many immigrated to in search of a dream life in a new frontier at the time. Although it has since been designated as an ”intangible folk cultural asset of the country,” this Japanese song style is among the folk arts in decline, struggling to survive as small villages across Japan face shrinking populations.
Flowing out of the Shingashi River, this piece has since traveled to many places across Asia, Europe and most recently to the United States, where it was arranged for Silkroad Ensemble in 2014 and has collaborated with musicians from around the world.