Harvestworks

Elico Suzuki

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Elico Suzuki is an interdisciplinary sound artist based in Tokyo, Japan. She is also active as an improviser and composer under the name “suzueri”. She graduated from Musashino Art University and IAMAS in Japan, and is an adjunct lecturer at Musashino Art University Imaging Arts and Sciences, and the University of Tokyo. She is currently in New York as a fellow of the Asian Cultural Council 2022 NY.

She has presented her work nationally and internationally, including at Experimental Intermedia (US), ISSUE Project Room (US), Goethe Institute Boston (US), NTT InterCommunication Center (Japan), LUFF Festival (Switzerland), Audiograft Festival (England), Festival Tsonami (Chile), and others.

Elico Suzuki (suzueri) is an artist in a rather strange position in Japan. She is also active in the fields of experimental music and improvisation, but I am very interested in the fact that she does not seem to belong to any field. What she is interested in and what she does is difficult to grasp from the perspective of our recognition of art and the music. Her works are based on her own stories and historical research, but they always have some kind of poetic or fascinating entrances that we can relate to. Her handmade devices allow us to relive the moment when a poem is born, and she also provides an entry point for each viewer, inspired by a very small world, a small phenomenon that we might otherwise miss.
(translation by Elico Suzuki) 3331 art fair, Tokyo – Curator’s Voice by Tomoko Yabumae (SOURCE)
This is, in my opinion, one of the best solo improvisations I’ve heard in a while. What makes it so special comes down to atmosphere and its conceptions: the sounds of clockwork are so natural, simple and understandable. They are something we can easily imagine, without mistaking them for natural musical sounds. Similarly, the piano is one of the most memorable instruments in the world, due to its long history and soothing, but unique, timbre. The repetitions place the listener in a musical world, in a room, which they can very easily understand – and suzueri modulates that world with great nuance. She doesn’t have the listener in great confusion or have them grasping for words, but she does play with their expectations and conceptions in a way which feels surreal. It’s because we can understand what and why makes the music feel natural while simultaneously understanding what makes it feel unnatural but not understanding why that it manages to perfectly incapsulate this surrealist feeling. In addition to this, it manages to maintain a sense of beauty and elegance, coming much closer to a daydream than a nightmare.
Review of the album’Ftarri de Solos’ by Connor Kurtz, The Free Jazz Collective Blog (SOURCE)
Suzueri creates home-made electric devices that are capable of sounding or triggering the piano on their own, whether it be by pressing the keys in a regular rate or by interacting with the instrument’s strings. The result of this, from the CD listener’s perspective, is an absolute uncertainty on which sounds are the product of machines and which are the immediate outcome of human decisions or creative urges. The mentality of the devices and the performers become interlinked, giving the live recording a string of human-machine logic which is as strange as it is exciting to follow.
Review of the album’Toy Piano Sokubaikai (2022, zappak) by Connor Kurtz, harmonic series blog (SOURCE)

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