momo (桃) is a “little sister” piece to the larger work DaiDai (大大) for solo marimba and three percussionists, commissioned by and written for Eriko Daimo and Pius Cheung. As you may notice, my first name Dai and Eriko’s family name both contain the same character, 大 (“dai”).
Creating a smaller companion to DaiDai proved more challenging than one might expect, and momo ultimately developed a very different character from its bigger sister.
The title momo means “peach” in Japanese. Since DaiDai is based on the repetition of the same-sounding word, I was looking for a similar structure in Japanese. Momo has a particularly sweet sound—it is a popular name for dogs (and people), and the peach itself suggests sweetness and happiness (as in the English expression “everything is peachy”). It also happens to be the name of our family’s lion teddy bear.
The letters m and o are very round and beautiful—just as the word appears in Japanese when written in hiragana: もも.
I also thought about the peach tree itself. I don’t know whether the wood of a marimba has anything to do with peach trees, but for all of these reasons combined, momo felt like the perfect title for this small marimba piece.
momo was commissioned by Eriko Daimo and Pius Cheung.
Dai Fujikura