INCENSE
Music for solo Japanese flutes, percussion, and koto
8PM on Sunday, November 7th, 2021
@ Joe’s Pub
Hello everyone,
I am thankful for the health and well-being of my loved ones, and I often think of those we have lost and those who continue to be affected by COVID.
I will be performing on Sunday, November 7th, 2021, at Joe's Pub, a venue in the heart of NYC that has presented my work for years. At that time, I wasn't sure how things would play out regarding the pandemic and vaccinations and how big of a concert it should be. It only made sense at that time to present a solo show since I had spent all of 2020 developing solo works in my studio while in quarantine.
It's been a few months since my last mailing. Pre-pandemic, I would write monthly to let people know what I'm up to and document and assess my artistic growth. However, in the last year and a half, I took a break from writing these, finding it discouraging to look at how things performance-wise really came to a stop even though I was staying active and busy developing my music and just dealing with things. However, as live performances slowly pick up, I plan to get back into the writing process. I want to use these writings to announce upcoming performances and reach out and communicate with people interested in my music and my life. Please feel free to comment or contact me, and I will try my best to respond!
First of all, an update to what I've been up to the last half-a-year:
I finished OTO GA TATSU- my online concert series. I want to again thank the folks at kaDON, the people who joined both in person and watched the archive, and the extraordinary artists who joined me: Wu Man, Tamangoh, Sumiyoshi Yuta from Kodo, and Kiyohiko Semba and Takahashi Kaori. Having a creative outlet during the pandemic pushed me to create and grow as an artist and stay connected with people in ways that I probably wouldn't have otherwise.
My first live performance of the year (in MAY) was momentous, one of the most unforgettable in my life for so many reasons. Performing in front of an audience in over a year was exhilarating, the venue- the cavernous Park Avenue Armory - was sublime, the cast of iconic and innovative collaborators - Laurie Anderson, Jason Moran, and Vernon Reid was an absolute dream, and add to all that an underpinning drone created by Lou Reed's guitars (manipulated by Lou's guitar tech Stewart Hurwood) and saxophonists and Tai Chi dancers moving around the space - my heart and mind almost couldn't take it all in. Laurie and Jason curated the whole thing, but Jason, a friend for twenty-five years, was the one who invited me into this world.
Around the same time, I worked with the great Adam Rudolph at the Jazz Gallery with Marco Capelli and Arun Ramamurthy. Adam is such an important figure in the last years of my life- playing with him and in his Go: Organic Orchestra has blown open my mind and connected me with so many other fantastic musicians. It's always a pleasure to explore vast musical worlds with Adam. Arun is a wonderful violinist who specializes in Carnatic music of Southern India and how it can exist in other contexts.
By July, I was working more and more in person with other musicians. At a recording/birthday party for my great friend, tabla and jazz drummer Sameer Gupta featuring many incredible musicians, including Martha Redbone and Charlie Burnham. TWO of my trios happened to be there: Bloodlines with cellist Marika Hughes and bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck and BORGUSAKAGU with Brazilian percussionist Rogerio Boccato and Sameer. I was a guest with Elena Moon Park at Lincoln Center, and then, by chance, just about a week later, I played on the same stage with Mark de Clive-Lowe and bassist Parker McCalister and drummer Anwar Marshall.
Also, I was commissioned by Silkroad to compose for the ensemble. We will workshop it at an upcoming retreat and debut it on tour in 2022. I wanted to write something inspired by Gagaku, both in its traditional form and how modern composers such as Takemitsu Toru, Ishii Maki, and Minoru Miki reshaped it. Meanwhile, I was thinking about the individuals of the Silkroad who would be playing the music- people who deal with music from China, Ethiopia, and Black American Jazz. I wanted to create a piece where we can also improvise and dialogue and groove out. The trick is to write something that brings together all these elements so that when taken as a whole, it somehow makes sense, even if it shouldn't. I love Gagaku; I love contemporary groove-based music. I dislike inelegant mashups of disparate music. I am looking forward to hearing what the incredible musicians of the Silkroad can do with the composition.
In terms of travel, I went to Boston, my first time working outside of NY in a long time- to work with students at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. I decided to teach the students Miyake- the Kodo piece that comes from the matsuri festival tradition of Kamitsuki on Miyake Island. I did so because when thinking about what these students need after a tumultuous and confusing year of online classes, rehearsals, lessons, and recitals to get back to sharing space and actual vibrations with fellow human beings, studying Japanese festival music is perfect: it's sacred, secular, cosmic, traditional, and evolving. It brings together communities across generations; it's often a lot of hard work, it's often deadly serious, and it's almost always lots of fun.
The last performance I did was a concert with Ravish Momin as part of his Flowers into Jewels project at Bowdoin University. Ravish is a fantastic percussionist who seamlessly integrates electronics, sampling, and lives percussion into his music. As musicians in Brooklyn do, we met over a decade ago but never worked together until this concert. Besides getting to make music and hang out with Ravish, this concert was significant to me in that, after a year and a half of messing around with it at home, I was able to use Ableton in a live setting for the first time. Just making sure I have all the equipment set up correctly was somewhat nerve-wracking for me, perhaps the least tech-savvy musician out there.
Dealing with looping technology makes perfect sense for a multi-instrumentalist stuck in quarantine. I wrote almost twenty compositions for various online concerts during the pandemic. For me, performing these pieces in public will be a sort of release- an opportunity to finally present the music live after a year of them existing only to certain people online.
Besides practicing Ableton, I've been devotedly studying Gagaku, Noh, and Kabuki, practicing traditional music between one to two hours before working on other things. I've been trying to get deeper into the phrasing and understanding the compositional structures of Gagaku and learning all the parts of Noh and Kabuki ensemble music - starting with the solfege-like singing of the flute and drum parts. I've been exchanging lessons with the great Kenny Endo, me teaching shinobue and him teaching Kabuki bayashi. It's been gratifying to learn drumming techniques, including kake-goe shouting.
All these will be on display for my upcoming Joe's Pub show- the new techniques and knowledge of traditional music, the use of Ableton, and the new compositions that I've been developing during the past year and a half. I am very proud and excited to share this new work with the world and hope you can join me on this occasion.
Sincerely,
Kaoru