Drawing harmonically from the aitake of the shō, Three Haiku sets to music three haiku by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō. The first movement, “On a Withered Branch,” depicts the melancholy of dusk in autumn, stretching over the course of the setting sun and the withering of a branch. As night falls, sounds emerge and decay into silence, temple blocks resound with the caws of a crow, and harmonies descend into shadowy dissonances. In the second movement, “First Winter Rain,” the flute, clarinet, vibraphone, piano, violin, and cello create a rainy backdrop against which the soprano sings lightly of a monkey and its little straw raincoat. Lastly, the third movement, “The Old Pond,” portrays the whims and caprices of a frog as it makes a splash in an old pond, leaving behind ripples that gradually return to equilibrium.

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(Note: Following the comments of several attendees of Three Haiku’s premiere on October 12, 2023, “The Old Pond” was revised to be longer in duration, which is reflected in the score but not in the recording.)