                  Poster 2017 for JACK Quartet

Community of Images:Japanese Moving Image Artists in the US 1960s-1970s Exhibition

Karen and Roger were invited to work with the Executive Director of COLLABORATIVE CATALOGING JAPAN, Ann Adachi-Tasch,in a major exhibition held at Art Alliance in Philadelphia from 14 June to 9 August 2024. Many photographs, Japanese and American reviews, programs and posters designed by Karen memorialized the Cross Talk Events that occurred in Tokyo during the period 1967-69. The Reynolds, in Japan under the aegis of the Institute of Current World Affairs, collaborated with Japanese composer, Joji Yuasa, critic Kuniharu Akiyama, and the Director of the American Cultural Center, Donald Albright to realize a number of individual events and a culminating Festival, CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA, held before more than 10,000 people in Kenzo Tange’s Olympic Gymnasium. Ephemera and photographs (facsimiles) related to CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA TOKYO 1969. Courtesy Roger and Karen Reynolds and private collection.

Updated 14 February 2025

Photo by Erik Jepsen

KAREN REYNOLDS

Karen Reynolds has been a committed musician with an activist dimension throughout her life. She has performed widely and notably, but her most formative experience remains premiering Mosaic – a duo by Roger Reynolds (included in New World Records’s ONCE set), and, in her booklet essay, Leta Miller writes that [Mosaic] is “played brilliantly by Karen Hill and [jazz pianist] Bob James.” Reynolds’s musical training began at home, and continued under the tutelage of Chicago Symphony flutist Arthur Kitti, then with Michel Debost in Paris [Fulbright year] and Marcel Moyse in Brattleboro, Vermont. Extending her energies toward larger platforms and the organization of festivals, Reynolds co-organized CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA (attended by an audience in Tokyo of 10,000 in 3 nights) in 1969. She also co-organized three other festivals: The Pacific Ring, Xenakis @ UCSD, and the John Cage Centennial Festival Washington, DC. Beyond concept, content, and process contributions, she brings to all of her engagements a discerning editorial eye. As a graphic designer, she creates programs, posters, and logos for concerts and her festival involvements, and has established and maintains three comprehensive websites. Her work appears on numerous CD covers and on C.F. Peters publications. With Roger Reynolds, she co-authored a book on the Anza-Borrego Desert residence designed for them by Xenakis, published by Routledge. Xenakis Creates in Architecture and Music: The Reynolds Desert House

TRAILER for Karen's UC San Diego posters
Video [3 minutes] by Kyle Johnson
Conrad Prebys Concert Hall lobby
University of California San Diego

Music: from Chatter/Clatter (Sanctuary)
by R. Reynolds

Detail of a 3-part poster design by Karen Reynolds
for CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA 1969
Tokyo Butoh dancer Tatsumi Hijikata

CROSS TALK included a series of three individual concerts (1967 and '68) as well as a three-day Festival (CROSS TALK INTERMEDIA) in the Winter of 1969 in Tokyo. The concerts were jointly sponsored by the American Cultural Center and Asahi Shinbun, and the Festival by other donors including Pepsi and Trio Electronics. All events were co-organized by Kuniharu Akiyama, Karen Reynolds, Joji Yuasa, and Roger Reynolds. Ancillary CROSS TALK events included the first Japanese performance of Eric Satie’s Vexations, and several workshops at the ACC.