‘After I wrote Okeanos Breeze for ensemble, I first added Touch of Breeze for sho, clarinet and viola, as a short introduction. Cutting Sky for pizzicato viola and koto is the most recent movement in this cycle. In my vision, Cutting Sky is more ‘vertical’, trying to cut the calm ‘horizontal’ flow of Okeanos Breeze with a sharp knife.’ Dai Fujikura July 2006

Reviews of Dai Fujikura’s Okeanos Breeze

November 2006
The Oxford Times
‘The combination of western instruments with the Japanese koto, sho and shakuhachi...inevitably produces a sound tapestry that places both new horizons and particular constraints on a composer. The first three pieces by Dai Fujikura showed immediately how bright, varied and energising the possibilities are.’

July 2006
Ivan Hewitt The Telegraph
‘…never less than intriguing, and often entrancingly beautiful. Dai Fujikura's Okeanos Breeze is a brilliantly virtuoso use of Okeanos's rich palette…

June 2006
Musical Pointers webpages
‘The new music heard is a little hard to characterise and, for those of us who have devoured non-Western music over the years, the excitement was the natural blend with Okeanos's core instrumentation, and not the exoticism of the mixture. One surprising innovator was the Japanese born Dai Fujikura, now well established in international new music circles, who told us that he had never heard traditional Japanese instruments until he heard them at a Darmstadt summer school when he was 20!’

December 2005
The Wire
‘...a kaleidoscope of vivid colours and some wonderfully lyrical writing.

Dai Fujikura’s “Okeanos Breeze”. Full of tension, colour and ensemble drama, the work is recognisably Japanese from a mile off, but it was Fujikura’s first work to include traditional instruments.’

November 2004
The Observer
‘Friday's late-night concert, in the more intimate St Paul's Hall, continued the east-west theme, as the chamber ensemble Okeanos shifted the focus from China to Japan...the fleeting Touch of Breeze by the young Dai Fujikura, whose Okeanos Breeze closed the concert. This was a compelling and original finale from this talented Japanese-born, UK-reared composer.'

Hear Okeanos play Dai’s music www.Daifujikura.com/s/