Orchestra Iowa shines light on Eastern Iowa pianist, composer

Maestro Timothy Hankewich wants Orchestra Iowa audiences to know just how lucky he is — and they are — to have pianist Miko Kominami in their midst. So he’s spotlighting her on Jerry Owen’s Piano Concerto in two upcoming Masterworks concerts.

Kominami, 51, of Decorah, will perform the three-movement work with Orchestra Iowa on Saturday evening at the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids and Sunday afternoon at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts.

It’s also a chance for the orchestra to again feature a work by Owen, 79, an award-winning Cedar Rapids composer with two Pulitzer Prize nominations shining among his glittering string of accolades.

“Featuring Orchestra Iowa's stars as soloist is always a pleasure, as it demonstrates to the community how incredibly high the level of artistry is that we’ve assembled and nurtured over the years,” Hankewich said.

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“It also allows the membership of the orchestra to take pride in our organization and to take stock that no one is just an anonymous cog in a larger enterprise, but rather, are recognized as accomplished individuals in their own right.

“Miko is an astonishing artist who I’ve admired over the years, whether it be in her chamber music and orchestra playing, or her solo work. I am proud to call her a friend and love to brag about how lucky we are to have her in the orchestra,” Hankewich added.

Owen also is thrilled to have Kominami returning to one of his compositions.

“We've done a lot of things together over the years,” he said. “She's a master technician. She's played my music off and on for the last 20 years, mostly in chamber concerts.

“She has a way of understanding what's on the page,” Owen noted. “It's almost superhuman in a way. She can understand what the composer intended to the degree that she even feels that she doesn’t have flexibility with understanding. In other words, she's gonna please the composer — there's no way around that.

“She's a terrific accompanist and ensemble player, and her solo playing is just perfection. She does everything to perfection. Boy does she learn fast and work hard. That's really impressive,” said Owen, also a pianist. “I sort of have a little love affair with her pianism.”

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About Kominami

Born in Toronto and educated at Juilliard for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Kominami moved to Decorah in 2000 when her husband, cellist Eric Kutz, joined the faculty at Luther College.

Just a couple months later, Kominami won the principal keyboard position with Orchestra Iowa, then known as the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Christian Tiemeyer. In 2002, she joined the music faculty at Luther College, as well.

She and her husband perform around the world as the Murasaki Duo, focusing on cello and piano chamber repertoire. Not surprisingly, their son and daughter grew up with music, and both were selected for the 2023 All-State Orchestra: Decorah senior Simon Kutz on cello and freshman Naomi Kutz on violin.

“They almost had no choice but to have music all the time,” Kominami said. Alas, they’ll miss each other’s concerts Saturday night, since mom will be performing in Cedar Rapids and the teens will be making music in Ames.

Kominami, on the other hand, said she didn’t grow up in a musical household, but her parents enjoyed classical music, so she listened to a lot of classical albums in her youth. Her mother noticed how 3-year-old Miko responded to the sound of a piano, and took her to a lesson to see how she would like that.

“Apparently I liked it,” Kominami said. “We didn’t even have a piano at the time.”

She progressed to the point that when she was 10, her grandfather bought her a shiny, black, mid-size Yamaha grand piano that she still plays in her home.

“I love it,” she said. “It just feels good every time I play it. Of course, I would love a Steinway concert grand, but honestly, I’m not going to ever perform in my house, so it’s a really wonderful instrument that I love to practice on.”

Practicing has never been an issue for her. By the time she was in school, she would practice the piano first, then do her homework. She also played violin in middle school and high school, but piano remained her main instrument.

“I did enjoy the violin, but in my mind, that was always secondary,” she said. “I always knew that I love listening to violin music, it just wasn’t my passion to play it. I liked it, but I didn’t love it.”

Still, she’s thankful for those nine or 10 years of violin, when she’s coaching chamber music or performing with strings in small ensembles.

“And what’s also cool is it that I had a pretty nice violin,” she said. “It wasn’t like, amazing, but it was a pretty nice violin, and my daughter is playing it right now.”

When they aren’t making music, Kominami and her family enjoy playing board games — when she can get the kids off their electronic devices — and hiking and exploring national parks. That was a welcome relief during the pandemic, when they could all pile into a car and head to a national park.

“That was fantastic for us,” she said. “ … We had a lot of fun, so (I’m) hoping to continue to do that. It’s such a refreshing way to clear my mind.”

Orchestra Iowa program

Now she’s busy clearing her mind to make way for the 27 minutes devoted to the three movements in Owen’s piece, followed by an intermission, then sitting back at the piano for the Rachmaninoff “Symphonic Dances” in the concert’s second half.

The program, which seems eclectic at first glance, begins with Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout (VI. Coqueteos).”

“Audiences will hear the vast diverse wealth of what makes American music,” Hankewich said. “We have lively Peruvian dance music that hints at its Spanish ancestry, together with the rhythms of the Charleston embedded in Jerry’s concerto. Finish that with one of Rachmaninoff’s greatest orchestral achievements in his ‘Symphonic Dances,’ and you have a dance tour of the Americas that is nothing short of a romp to play and hear.”

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Owen’s Piano Concerto, written in 1990, was commissioned by local retired oral surgeon Dr. Jim Stickley, “probably the most interesting amateur pianist I know,” Owen said.

The piece premiered in January 1992, with pianist Bruce Brubaker and the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra. It aired that spring on Iowa Public Television, and Brubaker returned in 1996 to again perform the piece with the Cedar Rapids Symphony. A rising star at the time, the Des Moines native now chairs the piano department at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

Owen is looking forward to hearing it again, this time with full orchestra in tandem with Kominami’s artistry. And Hankewich didn’t hesitate to place the piano part in Kominami’s hands.

“Her affinity for his music made her an obvious choice when we programmed the concerto for this season,” he said.

Owen described the work’s three movements as expressing individualism in society, with the piano as one entity, and the orchestra as another, celebrating “the differences and the common ground between them.”

Titled “Salutations,” “Monologues and Dialogues,” and “Confluence,” the movements highlight the differences that can meld through conversations, into a trust in which the parts “can laugh together, dance together, and remember what it was that made us one.”

Coming off Orchestra Iowa’s centennial season, Hankewich is happy to have another chance to celebrate Owen’s artistry, and tie past to present and future.

“If a community’s symphony orchestra is to earn its relevance and survive into the future, it must reflect the culture and personality of the region it serves,” he said. “ … After its inception, (Owen’s Piano Concerto) was given serious consideration for a Pulitzer Prize. This is something to celebrate, and deserves another serious listen.

“But this program isn’t just about a creative slant on American music, more importantly it’s about our area’s own place in the ongoing story of symphonic musical history.”

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