Sospeso crosses paths with the great sculptor and poet Kotaro Takamura when they perform the American premiere of Louis Andriessen's setting of his text, Tao, on September 28.

Kotaro Takamura was born in 1883.  Takamura studied sculpture in France and was profoundly influenced by Rodin; much of his career was an attempt to apply Western principles to Japanese sculpture adn poetry.  In 1914 he released his first poetical volume, Dotei, and he married in the same year the gifted and outspoken sculptor Chieko Naganuma in 1914; they became a celebrated couple in Japanese culture.

Most of Takamura's poetry is in free verse; an early, Western-inspired 'decadent' period gave way to a late period of crystalline carlity and unadorned expression.

Naganuma's tragic illness and decline into madness became the subject of much of Takamura's most famous verse, including the book Chieko syo (Chieko's Sky).  Takamura assumed a militaristic stance during World War II; after the war he retired from art and writing, and he died from tuberculosis in 1956.

Joshua Cody