Jō Kondō

Jō Kondō ( Japanese 近藤 譲 , Kondō Jō ; born October 28, 1947 in Tokyo Prefecture ) is a Japanese composer.

Kondō studied composition at the University of Tokyo until 1972 . A scholarship from the John D. Rockefeller III Fund enabled him to stay in New York from 1977-78. Here he met three composers, John Cage , Morton Feldman and Steve Reich , who had a decisive influence on one of his own works.

In 1979 he gave guest lectures at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. In 1980 he founded the Musica Practica Ensemble , a chamber orchestra for contemporary music, which he directed until its dissolution in 1991. He lived in London in 1986 as a Senior Fellow of the British Council . In the following year he was composer in residence at the Hartt School of Music in Hartfort, Connecticut, and gave summer courses at the Dartington International Summer School in England, whose composition classes he led in 2000. Kondō is professor emeritus at the Ochanomizu Women's University in Tokyo.

Kondō composed well over a hundred works, including solo works and chamber music as well as pieces for large orchestra and electronic music. His work was the focus of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2005 and the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival in 2011 . In 2012 he became an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

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• University of York Music Press - Jo Kondo
• Bonnie C. Wade: "Composing Japanese Musical Modernity" , University of Chicago Press, 2014, ISBN 9780226085494 , p. 68