How do you make music together when you're an ocean apart? Ask Rachel Woolf and Makana Jimbu, who formed Duo 彩 AYA. Rachel plays flute, and Makana plays marimba. They've commissioned new works and worked up some old favorites as well, for a brand-new album, just released on Neuma Records, called "Cycles."
They met at the University of North Texas, and have worked together since then, touring in America and Japan, and are now releasing their debut album.
The title "Cycles" comes from one of the pieces, from composer Evan Williams. Rachel says the title "connected to the concept of recurrence and renewal, of this cyclical interplay between us, the composers, and our performing between music and listener."
One piece on the album, the composer Fumi Ono's "Water Planet," tells an interplanetary story of a space probe discovering a water planet. "The piece shows this journey where the flute symbolizes the atmosphere, and the marimba is the space probe, and it's an incredible interplay." The piece includes electronic soundscapes by Ono as well.
Says Woolf, "We essentially did all of this cross-continent, and we had 2 days, truly, to put all this music together in person before we took it on the road." She calls the challenging process "a testament to our friendship, and just the level of trust that we have in each other."
Duo 彩 AYA - flute/marimba duo
New album, "Cycles"
Album release: 3 p.m. Sunday, May 4
Location: Amor Eterno, 540 S. Presa St.
duoaya.com
