By Phyllis Chen

Throughout his travels from the 1950s onward, Isamu Noguchi collected many musical instruments from India, Indonesia, Japan, and elsewhere, which he later displayed in his living spaces in Long Island City and Mure, Japan. Later in his career when he was exploring the interior nature of stone, Noguchi began experimenting with using an especially conductive regional stone which he was fortuitously introduced to in the 1970s at a temple near his studio in Mure. Here, musician, composer, teacher, one-time Queens resident, and Noguchi Museum devotee Phyllis Chen recounts her own first encounter with and research into Noguchi’s rare foray into a form of musical sculpture.

As a former decade-long Astoria resident, I frequented The Noguchi Museum for Free First Fridays, workshops, openings, and performances. In September 2019, the museum hosted the “Hands-On at Noguchi” event for people to play Noguchi’s Sounding Stone (1981), a sculpture made of molten volcanic rock. Given the title of the sculpture and the delicately crafted miniature temple mallet displayed on top of the stone, it seemed Noguchi was aware of the stone’s natural resonance and invited us to listen. When struck with the wooden mallet, the stone emits a crisp, bell-like sound. As a pianist, composer, and musician deeply interested in the natural resonances of material, I was drawn to Sounding Stone for its sonic potential. This led to a multiyear collaboration with the museum to explore Sounding Stone and his other sanukite sculptures for sound. 

Each time I play the stones, I continue to marvel at the complexity of the sound and the simplicity of the material. The sanukite stone, known as kan kan ishi in Kagawa Prefecture, feels spirited and ephemeral.¹ Improvising with the stones has been at the heart of discovering them.

Listening to stone was always a part of Noguchi’s practice. He once wrote, “It is a direct link to the heart of matter—a molecular link. When I tap it, I get the echo of that which we are—in the solar plexus—in the center of gravity of matter. Then, the whole universe has a resonance!”² I feel a strong kinship to this approach as a musician and sound artist. To work with an object’s natural resonance opens our ears and minds to new timbral possibilities. Instead of refining all edges of an instrument to create a consistent tone across its full range, finding its duller and thuddier regions is just as interesting to me as its sonic “sweet spots.” These sonic findings reveal to me the fundamental nature of the material and something about the world we live in. 

In the fall of 2019, I visited The Noguchi Museum’s art storage to explore other related sounding stone sculptures. Each stone has its own unique shape, thickness, and a collection of pitches and overtones. Some are partially polished, but many were described to me as untitled or unfinished. They all emitted the unmistakably beautiful bell-like sound of sanukite. 

I spent several months exploring each stone as a sonic landscape. I played them with mallets, meandering across their surfaces, tapping all sides and crevices to discover the subtle timbral differences. Playing and listening to the stones daily, I felt an intimacy with Noguchi, imagining him tapping and listening to these stones as I did. I musically cataloged my findings by creating a sonic map for each stone.

Halo–for Seven Sanukite Stones and Gongs
For the above audio piece, ‘Halo,” I am joined by Susie Ibarra, percussionist and composer, to play Noguchi’s sounding stones and my collection of sanukite stones. Together, we play different rhythmic cycles, moving freely among irregular patterns of time, interchanging the stones on a whim. 

In the Spring of 2023, I received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed me to travel to Shikoku Island, Japan, to visit The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum Japan. Located in the stone-carving village of Mure, the museum was previously the site of Noguchi’s studio and spiritual home after he met Masatoshi Izumi in 1964. An artisan and stonemason who later became an artist, Izumi was one of Noguchi’s most influential collaborators during the last two decades of his life. 

As I prepared for this trip, I read a great deal about Noguchi and Izumi and their synergistic relationship. Thanks to my mentors and advisors, Ralph Samuelson and Georg Kochi, I was formally introduced to Izumi’s wife, Harumi, and daughter, Mihoko Masuda, during my visit. The Izumi family warmly met me and expressed interest in my project. They showed me Noguchi’s Stone Circle, his workshop, and his traditional Japanese Edo-period house that was transported from Marugame and rebuilt on the property. Though many of Noguchi’s late works can be traced back to Mure, what interested me was the sanukite rock for Sounding Stone, specifically from this region. 

There, in this multigenerational stone-cutting atelier in Mure, the Izumi family introduced me to the different local stones that were used in Izumi and Noguchi’s work. Scattered throughout the premises were various stone scraps that I was allowed to explore and listen to by tapping with a mallet. I played with many different shapes and forms of Aji stone, marble, and basalt. 

When speaking to Harumi Izumi about the sounding stones (or kan kan ishi, according to ancient times), she informed me of a special stone mallet Noguchi made to strike the stones. From underneath a seat in his house, she produced his mallet.

Floating Bell—for Sounding Stones and Shakuhachi Flute
This audio clip, “Floating Bell,” is inspired by the origin legend of the shakuhachi flute. The old legend tells the story of a young monk who blew across the end of a bamboo rod and declared that it sounded like his master’s bell. I played the shakuhachi and Noguchi’s sounding stones, which are struck by various mallets and rubbed gently to create soft, sustaining sounds.

After several visits, Izumi’s daughter, Ms. Mihoko Masuda, advised me to find more information about sanukite stone at the top of nearby Mount Yashima. There, I would find a man who owns a trinket shop—the only place that still sells sanukite stone. The owner’s father was once a stone lithophone maker.  

Going only by her word, I hiked Mount Yashima the following day and found a breathtaking panoramic view of the Seto Inland Sea. Perched on the mountaintop was also Yashima-ji Temple, one of the eighty-eight temples of Shikoku Henro, an ancient pilgrimage walk between eighty-eight temples on Shikoku Island. To my relief, I found the trinket shop she described. Thanks to Google Translate, I met the owner and learned about the sanukite stones. What he shared is transcribed here: 

“Sanukite stone is found in Kagawa Prefecture and nowhere else in the world. Its existence is considered rare. The ancient story behind the stone is that approximately 15 million years ago, when the Tonaikai Sea was still land, a volcanic belt running from east to west caused a huge explosion. It is believed that part of the lava that flowed out at the time formed today’s sanukite layer. The current rock was discovered about 60 years ago by the late Takeshi Nagao (Josekido), a resident of Sanuki Kokubunji Temple, who painstakingly searched and began mining it for Buddhist music. He made a stone harp and gave it to His Majesty the Emperor and the Crown Prince of England. Sanukite is a type of pyroxene andesite, harder than quartz but brittle and easily broken. The bare surface is a pale blue, but when polished, it has a jet-black luster. The stone base is made of a uniform glassy substance with few crystal grains. It has been used to hang in entrances and tea rooms to signal entrances, as well as Buddhist gong drums.”

I played with various stones that afternoon, including many that belonged to the owner’s father. Some looked like freshly cut pieces of stone that had naturally fallen into their chosen shape. Other pieces were carefully and evenly cut to look like metal beams for a musical instrument. In their raw and untouched state, I could sense the natural beauty that Noguchi was drawn to. I wondered, at what point does a found natural material become something that bears an artist’s name? 

A few hours later, I headed down the mountain with my personal collection of sanukite stones. 

Fluttering Phoenix—for Sampler and Modified Sounding Stones
This piece depicts the Chinese astro-mythological creature, the Yellow Phoenix. It is believed that the Phoenix is an immortal bird that symbolizes harmony. Recorded samples of the sounding stones were cut and modified to make a custom sampler in Ableton Live. I am playing Noguchi’s sounding stones on a modulating keyboard that creates pitch flex on the stones.

It seems somewhat reductive to summarize these sonic findings into a piece of music, as if they can be permanently captured. Through the months, I’ve had many sonic explorations, and each time I return to play with the sanukite stones, I am captivated by their fleeting sonic beauty. No matter how many maps I draw or recordings I make, the visceral experience of hearing the rocks resonating in a room can’t be fully captured in a piece of music. Nonetheless, I hope these sound recordings provide a glimpse into the beautiful resonance of Noguchi’s sounding stones.

Phyllis Chen is a composer and sound artist whose music draws from her tactile exploration of object and sound. The toy piano became her ground for developing her personal voice—one that defies genre and reflects her third-culture kid experience. She was the recipient of the 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2019 Cage-Cunningham Fellow, and is currently an assistant professor of music composition at the State University of New York at New Paltz. 

¹ Noguchi most likely misidentified this type of stone as obsidian. It is described elsewhere as another regional volcanic stone, an andesite known as sanukite (a name deriving from Sanuki, a historical province predating modern-day Kagawa Prefecture), known as kan kan ishi. See Isamu Noguchi, The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987), 72.

² Isamu Noguchi, The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987), 26.