February 20 – 23 2008, 8pm
Marginalia
re-visioning Roy Kiyooka
Vancouver East Cultural Centre, 1895 Venables Street
Tickets $24 + surcharges from Ticketmaster
Winner of the 2008 Alcan Performing Arts Award, Marginalia wishes to create an opportunity for the public to consider aspects and values of art making, Kiyooka’s multiple practice and the inspiration stemming from its richness and diversity. The idea of referring to different works by Kiyooka, consists then of composing a form in which these layered differences can become a practical piece. Simultaneity, polycentricity and overlapping points of view will be the characteristic elements of Marginalia. BC composers Jocelyn Morlock, Stefan Smulovitz, Stefan Udell and Hildegard Westerkamp will be the commissioned artists who will be writing the four new works within a strong relationship to Kiyooka’s works. The new compositions will take cues and motivations from specific characters, ideas and passages in Kiyooka’s works and will become an organic stimulus for an inner dialogue between Kiyooka, his displayed works, the composers, the performing musicians and the audience. Like a musical palimpsest the dialogue among the various components of Marginalia will not be just an echo of Kiyooka’s work, not simply a response; it will have a life of its own in the interactive relation between the composers and Kiyooka, his cross-cultural and polymorphic artistic approach and his inner dialogue and research.

http://www.newmusic.org/

Remembering Roy Kiyooka

Editorial reprinted from The Bulletin, January 2008 http://www.jccabulletin-geppo.ca/

A Renegade Nisei
January 4, 2008. I’m editing a story on Roy Kiyooka while watching Michael de Courcy’s short film Voice: Roy Kiyooka on his website www.michaeldecourcy.com. Today is the 14th anniversary of Roy’s death, and there he is on my computer monitor, unmistakably himself and very much in context—at the Western Front for his 66th birthday/retirement party surrounded by friends: Takeo, Linda, Minoru, Paul Gibbons, Themba Tana, Jim Munro, Rhoda and Trudy . . . His face, his mannerisms, his voice are so familiar, it’s almost painful to watch.

Although I knew Roy as a family friend growing up in Toronto and Montreal, it wasn’t until we moved to Vancouver in the late sixties (at his urging) that I got to know him a little better. He lived down the street from my parent’s place in Strathcona. One summer he hired me to help him build a darkroom in his basement. He bummed cigarettes off me and bought me my first donburi at Aki’s on Powell Street. He explained that it was the Japanese version of a sandwich. I thought that was pretty weird at the time. I remember printing the images for The Fontainebleau Dream Machine in my father’s darkroom in these oversized developing trays that Roy bought specifically for that purpose. It seemed really extravagant at the time. But that was the kind of thing Roy did. I think he hand-coloured the prints afterwards.

Years later he and I were part of a gang that played poker at Mas Funo’s place in Kitsilano. He wasn’t a great poker player, but he more than made up for it with his verve, his sense of style and his sheer enthusiasm. I used to see him riding his bike around Strathcona and Chinatown, his right trouser leg rolled up to avoid getting grease on it, wearing the ever-present down vest and bandana tied around his head. He seemed so deeply imbedded in the neighbourhood that it was impossible to think of it without him.

When he died so unexpectedly early in 1994 we put out a call for tributes to be printed in The Bulletin. Responses immediately began flooding in from across Canada. He had a great many friends and admirers within the arts community. What was so striking about the tributes we received was the immense affection and respect that everyone held towards him.

The premiere next month of Vancouver New Music’s Marginalia: Re-visioning Roy Kiyooka, under the direction of Giorgio Magnanensi, reminds us that Roy Kiyooka had an impact far beyond the body of work he left behind. He was a renegade nissei, an intellectual without pretensions, an artist who refused to be pigeonholed, a wonderful teacher, an adventurer and good friend. That he continues to inspire and engender respect speaks, I think, to his indomitable individuality.

“One of the wonderful things about Roy, actually, was that he got so much joy out of the things he did, you know, the music he played, whatever he did. Poker – he was a terrible poker player, a terrible poker player – except the night he was lucky . . . I wasn’t there, but apparently, every time he’d get a good hand he’d fall on the floor laughing and everyone would just fold.”
Linda Uyehara Hoffman, February 1994 issue of The Bulletin

“I can’t really say that I knew Roy as well as a lot of people did, but I knew him for a long time. To me he will always be the family friend who called me Sam well into my teens—a childhood name that I had discarded at age five. It wasn’t a purposeful mistake on his part, it was simply how he’d known me as a baby. Eventually, of course, he came around. He always did. Roy, you filled our houses with smoke and laughter—there was no one like you.”
from the Editorial, February 1994 issue of The Bulletin