Composer Gene Coleman, a Guggenheim award-winning luminary in the world of experimental filmmaking and avant-garde music, is more of a genre to perform in residence at a prestigious music festival than at the Olympics.

“I am not a great athlete, he admits. But Coleman grew up in a small village in Wisconsin where he was fascinated by the Bruce Lee movies he saw on television and learned karate from books as a child. After the International Olympic Committee voted in 2016 to bring karate to the Toyko Games, Coleman was invited by the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission to compose a soundscape to celebrate the decision.

Coleman’s creation is called KATA, after the elegantly choreographed movement patterns practiced by martial artists. “If you are a newbie karate student, you are learning kata,” says Coleman. “And these kata contain all of the movements that this particular style of karate is made of.” It’s like music, and also like code.

For his composition, Coleman decided to follow the brain waves of people practicing karate, and then turn that neurological data into music. He worked with another American composer, Adam Vidiksis, who specializes in music technology. Together, they adapted a motion sensing device to measure everything from body temperature to heart rate to create a musical portrait of a body-mind connection.

“What this allows is a very interesting look at the mental state of the performer, whether he is a musician or a martial artist,” explains Vidikisis. (Due to COVID-19, the device has been used mostly on itself so far.)

Composer Gene Coleman rehearses KATA with famous shamisen performer Tsuruzawa Sansuzu in Tokyo in February 2020.

Adam Vidiksis / Gene Coleman

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Adam Vidiksis / Gene Coleman

Composer Gene Coleman rehearses KATA with famous shamisen performer Tsuruzawa Sansuzu in Tokyo in February 2020.

Adam Vidiksis / Gene Coleman

“The way neurons work is also incredibly musical,” adds Coleman. “They play together. They play in counterpoint. They play as a soloist. They play in larger groups in … a symphony of activity.”

Coleman has collaborated with Japanese musicians since his first residency in Japan in 2001. For this piece, he worked with two famous masters of traditional music who embrace experimentation: lute player Sansuzu Tsuruzawa and flute player Akikazu Nakamura , who is also a renowned composer and arranger.

Akikazu Nakamura, famous traditional musician, also experiments with jazz and avant-garde compositions.

Gene Coleman

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Gene Coleman

Akikazu Nakamura, famous traditional musician, also experiments with jazz and avant-garde compositions.

Gene Coleman

In a video for the US-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship, Tsuruzawa explained in Japanese that karate shares with traditional Japanese music a sense of strong momentum and the use of an extreme range of breath. Speaking to NPR, Nakamura points out that they also share a deep connection with nature and create gaps for calm and peaceful thoughts. “We make a hole in space over time,” he says.

When asked for his thoughts on non-Japanese musicians experimenting with Japanese cultural forms, Nakamura laughs. He didn’t find it appropriate. “In fact, half of me grew up … through American culture,” he adds.

When cultures come together happily in a spirit of accomplishment and recognition, he says, it’s great art – and also, he adds, the Olympics.