Composition
The shakuhachi, with its broad sonic palette, is admirably suited to contemporary music. As a trained composer, Jim Franklin is active in this field. He composes for shakuhachi solo (e.g. the piece Mahabodh-Stufen), for shakuhachi and other Japanese instruments (e.g. A Lattice of Winds, for shakuhachi and koto), and for shakuhachi and Western instruments (e.g. Four Fleeting Star Dreams, and Coma Berenices, for shakuhachi and piano).
As a composer, Jim Franklin also works with electroacoustic music. He composes, performs and improvises with shakuhachi and live electronics, often in combination with theremin. The theremin, which he plays himself, is one of the earliest electronic instruments, and is played without touching it; the instrument is controlled by the arm and hand movements of the performer in the space around it. This requires a fine degree of bodily control and attentiveness, which manifest themselves in subtle shadings of sound - also a characteristic of the shakuhachi.
In this way, apparently contradictory sound worlds encounter one another in a complementary and mutually enhancing fashion, mediated by the bodily shaping of sound.
Franklin's CD 'Songs from the Lake' (2020) is an example
of this compositional direction.