Information

magic manju  (2023)

日本語：マジック饅頭

for Electric Guitar

ca. 8 min.

Score

Purchase PDF score (USD15) HERE

Reviews

ResMusica: Les créations de Voix Nouvelles à Royaumont (Sept. 14, 2023)

Program Note

Some years ago, I visited the dentist to have my bottom-right wisdom tooth extracted. The wisdom tooth had been growing in a way that caused it to push against surrounding teeth, resulting in severe discomfort.

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Before the operation, the doctor gave me a small manju, explaining that it would help alleviate the pain. The manju was soft and chewy with a faintly sweet and bitter aftertaste, causing a slight numbness on my tongue.

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The operation proceeded shortly afterward, and after receiving several injections of sedation anesthesia into my gum, I began to see tawdry red and green colors in front of my eyes. After a while, I found myself completely transported into a flower field, with the sky flickering in colors often seen in cheap Christmas decoration lights.

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Although I did not experience concrete pain during the procedure, the severe mental discomfort of feeling the dentist drilling into my gum and forcibly dividing the tooth into sections lingered throughout the nearly two-hour operation.

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It took about two weeks for the pain to subside, allowing me to resume normal eating. Several years later, while walking on the same street where I had my wisdom tooth extracted, I noticed that the dental clinic had closed down. To this day, I still do not know the exact ingredients of the manju.

On Composition

magic manju was composed for Académie Voix Nouvelles 2024 and was premiered by Yaron Deutsch as part of Festival Royaumont. While the world of dental health has had revolutionary progress by a wide range of tools and methods, the act of drilling, slicing, and forcibly pulling out a tooth has not changed from the past. While I am extremely thankful for the dentist for removing my wisdom tooth, I will also forever remember the severe distress of being aware of each cuts, drills, and shots, and pulls, as well as the strange manju I consumed before the surgery.

Past Performances

September 10, 2023 (World Premiere)

Festival Royaumont: En création

Fondation Royaumont, Asnières-sur-Oise, France

Yaron Deutsch (elec. gt.)

Public Broadcast

September 27, 2023

Radio France: france musique

Yaron Deutsch (elec. gt.)

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