Kiyoshi Kuromiya: Critical Path (2024)
Preface
Kiyoshi Kuromiya. Photo used by permission from the Equality Forum.
Kiyoshi Kuromiya: Critical Path was written for clarinetist Shawn Copeland as part of an album of new pieces celebrating the lives of LGBTQ heroes. My piece is inspired by the life and work of Japanese American AIDS activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya:
Kuromiya was based in Philadelphia, where he founded the Critical Path project, which provided critical information about AIDS to the gay community using modem-connected computers and a snail-mail newsletter.
Kuromiya collaborated with architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller and is listed as an adjuvant in Fuller’s book Critical Path — a project management concept stating that to succeed at an overall goal, we must first determine the sequence of intermediary goals that need to be achieved.
Kuromiya was a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. He protested and marched with King and took care of King’s children during King’s funeral. One story of Kuromiya’s activism during the Civil Rights Movement stuck out to me: at a sit-in demonstration in Maryland, Kuromiya and his fellow protesters kept feeding coins into the jukebox to play Irvin Berlin’s “God Bless America” on repeat. The manager eventually unplugged the jukebox.
Kiyoshi Kuromiya: Critical Path combines three musical concepts:
The work follows the timeline of the AIDS crisis from 1981 (the CDC reports a mysterious disease that seemed to have a disproportionate effect on gay men) to 2011 (a CDC study produced the first evidence of the efficacy of antiretroviral medications such as PrEP) and the myriad acronyms that progressed through the epidemic’s history. These acronyms are translated into musical motifs by using Morse code.
The piece introduces and repeats, in counterpoint, the song “America, The Beautiful” to echo the story about Kuromiya’s sit-in (because “God Bless America” is not yet in the public domain).
Finally, the work concludes with a coda that recalls how Kuromiya disseminated critical information about AIDS throughout the community.
Special thanks to Shawn Copeland, Joshua Gardner, and Stephanie Gardner for their help with workshopping and developing the initial ideas, and, of course, Shawn Copeland for believing in the project and commissioning the work.
Team
Solo B-flat clarinet with fixed digital playback or optional clarinet ensemble
Heard
Performance and recording are pending in 2024.