This Tuesday November 8, Afternoon New Music (3-6pm EST) will feature the otherworldly sounds of sho (Japanese mouth organ), koto (Japanese transverse harp) and voice. Programmer Kat Whatley will be joined by internationally active contemporary musician Ko Ishikawa (sho), Kayoko Nakagawa (koto), Ami Yamasaki (voice artist) and composer Mamoru Fujieda who will discuss their upcoming concert at the Japan Society on Friday November 11 entitled Sounds to Summon the Japanese Gods. The concert will include selections spanning from medieval gagaku (Imperial Court music) to new works by acclaimed music composer Mamoru Fujieda. Visit http://www.japansociety.org/ for more information regarding the concert and meditation workshop led by Ko Ishikawa.
Ko Ishikawa (sho) was born in Tokyo in 1963 and studied gagaku (Imperial Court music) under Mayumi Miyata, Hideaki Bunno and Sukeyasu Shiba. In 1987, Ishikawa joined Reigakusha, a celebrated gagaku ensemble in Japan known for its activities performing 20th and 21st century music. Ishikawa is an active performer both in Japan and abroad. International engagements include: Maerzmusik (Berlin, 2006), Julio Estrada’s opera Murmullos del Paramo (Madrid, Stuttgart, Mexico and Venice, 2006), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (England, 2007), Japan/Culture + Hyper Culture (Washington D.C., 2008), Sound of Stockholm (Sweden, 2012), Linked Verse at Stanford University (California, 2013), Festival Hue (Vietnam, 2014), Franfurter Positionen (Germany, 2015) and No Idea Festival (Texas, 2016), to name a few. In 2008, Ishikawa performed at Japan Society in Gagaku Revolution: New Sounds of Ancient Bamboo. Ishikawa has come to be regarded as one of the leading players of the sho for both traditional gagaku music as well as contemporary and experimental music and his performances of both traditional and new music for sho have been highly regarded around the world. He has performed in Mamoru Fujieda’s Voices of the Spirits project since 2015.
Kayoko Nakagawa (koto) graduated from Takasaki Art Junior College and later NHK Japanese Music Institute. As a solo performer, Nakagawa has toured throughout Asia, Moscow and New York. Nakagawa often performs contemporary music premieres and collaborates with western instruments, dance, opera and improvised music. She has performed in Mamoru Fujieda’s Monophony Concert series since 1997 and with Voices of the Spirits project since 2015.
Ami Yamasaki (voice artist) is a vocalist and cross-media artist from Tokyo. Through her creations across many disciplines, she experiments with the nuances of the world, bringing out or weakening its light and shade and explores the relationship between us and our universe. As a vocalist, Yamasaki has collaborated with psychedelic rock icon Keiji Haino, provided original music for choreographer Makoto Matsushima, and appeared in the play Dream in Firelight directed by Yasunori Ikunishi. Yamasaki also directs films, and creates installations and performance pieces. In 2011, Yamasaki was invited to New York by the Reanimation Library and Proteus Gowanus to participate in the opening of their Migration exhibition. In 2013, she was invited by RMIT University to participate in the Sonic City Festival in Melbourne. Yamasaki created a site-specific piece titled Exchange-Planting the seed at Aomori Contemporary Art Centre and for Tokyo Experimental Festival vol.9 at Tokyo Wonder Site. Other credits include Sayoko Yamaguchi The Wearist, Clothed in the Future by Yasunori Ikunishi, yes, me at YES theatre and refugee camp in Palestine; Letters at Theater Zero in Seoul Korea, Spring Storm with Kenji Haino, Crossing Vision at the Italian Cultural Institute and So contemporary at Kanazawa Citizen’s Art Center. Selected as a 2017 Asian Cultural Council Fellow, Yamasaki is planning a film project in New York City in 2017. Yamasaki worked with Ko Ishikawa since 2015 in productions including Mamoru Fujieda’s Voices of the Spirits, Planeting, and Avalon.
Mamoru Fujieda (composer) received his doctorate in music in 1988 from the University of California, San Diego where he studied composition and computer music with Joji Yuasa, Gordon Mumma and Morton Feldman. In 1989, Fujieda returned to Japan and began to collaborate with Yuji Takahashi, Malcolm Goldstein, Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Band, the experimental theater company Ren-niku Kobo, sculptor Mineko Grimmer, butoh dancer Setsuko Yamada and other avant-garde artists. Since 1994, he has collaborated with botanist Yuji Dogane to present several ecological sound installations based on the mixture of alternative tunings, as well as melodic patterns based on data taken from plants. Fujieda organized the Monophony Consort, an ensemble that specializes in the performance of new types of traditional Japanese music, with the music of Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, John Cage, Terry Riley and other American experimental composers. In 2012, Japan Society commissioned Fujieda for the piece Gamelan Cherry which was performed at the Bang-on-a-Can All-Stars: Rimpa Reimaged concert at Japan Society. He is currently a professor at the Faculty of Design, Kyushu University. www.fujiedamamoru.com
