Yumiko Tanaka

Gidayu-Shamisen Player

Yumiko Tanaka was born in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture.

While a student majoring in musicology at Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, Tanaka was attracted to the timbre of the gidayu-shamisen (also known as the futozao, or thick-necked, shamisen), which accompanies gidayu-bushi in Bunraku, traditional Japanese puppet theater.

In 1979 she began studying gidayu recitation with female gidayu recitation artist Komanosuke Takemoto (a Living National Treasure), and the following year became a Bunraku disciple of the late gidayu-shamisen master Kinshi Nozawa (who was also a Living National Treasure). She has been performing traditional gidayu music under the name Yumi Tsuruzawa.

Since her debut, Tanaka has been very active as a shamisen and vocal musician, not only in the world of traditional Japanese music, but also in contemporary music, free jazz, new music, dance, theater, etc.

Tanaka has a Master's degree in musicology from Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. In 1991 she was awarded the Minister of Education's Art Encouragement Prize for Newcomers for the year 1990. In 1999 she received the Committee's Special Prize at the 68th Japan Music Competition. She is an associate professor at Hyogo University of Teacher Education, lecturing on Japanese music history and teaching shamisen and koto to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Taku Sugimoto

Guitar and cello player

Born in Tokyo, December 20, 1965.

Taku Sugimoto started playing guitar when he was a high school student. At first he played rock and blues, and then he also became interested in free jazz, European free improvised music, and avant-garde classical music.

In 1985, Sugimoto co-founded the improvisational psychedelic rock band Piero Manzoni, whose main influences were the Velvet Underground and MC5. The group, including Masaki Bato on bass and Sugimoto on guitar, disbanded in '88. For the next few years, Sugimoto was involved in solo performance and session work. It was during this period that he released his first solo LP, Mienai Tenshi ('88), which had a big, heavy sound.

In '91, Sugimoto started playing cello, and for the next two years abandoned the guitar in order to focus completely on this instrument. He formed Henkyo Gakudan (which was active in '91-'92) with alto sax player Hiroshi Itsui and guitarist Michio Kurihara. The group's music sounded like somewhat high-volume improvised chamber music. Sugimoto was also briefly a member, in '93, of the psychedelic rock band Ghost, and in '94, of Tetuzi Akiyama's avant-garde classical music band Hikyo String Quintet. After releasing his cello solo CD Slub in '94, Sugimoto gave up the cello.

Sugimoto and Tetuzi Akiyama launched their guitar duo Akiyama-Sugimoto in '94. Since that time, Sugimoto has gradually shifted from a loud, heavy sound to the extremely quiet sound, full of silences, which he has established through solo and other projects as his own unique style. He has played frequently with Akiyama, Toshimaru Nakamura (guitar, mixing board), Yuta Kawasaki (analog synthesizer), Yoshihide Otomo (turntables, guitar, electronics) and others. Since 1998, together with Akiyama and Nakamura, he has been organizing an inspiring monthly concert, The Improvisation Meeting at Bar Aoyama (renamed The Experimental Meeting at Bar Aoyama in '99, and Meeting at Off Site in 2000).

Every year since '95, Sugimoto has performed in concerts overseas. He played with Akiyama-Sugimoto in New York in '95, and in Chicago and Detroit in '96; and solo and with cellist Boo Wiget in Switzerland and Berlin in '97. In '98, he went to Chicago and New York to play with local musicians such as Jim O'Rourke, Kevin Drumm, and Donald Miller. In Autumn of '99 he toured Belgium, France, England, and Austria, playing solo and with Günter Müller (drums, electronics), Keith Rowe (guitar), and others. In November of that year, he also appeared in the festival Music Unlimited '99, in Wels, Austria.

Michihiro Satoh

Tsugaru-shamisen player

Michihiro Satoh was born in 1957 in Tokyo, Japan. His mother, who played shamisen and was versed in a type of traditional Japanese dance, was the influence behind his enrolling in a shamisen school in 1970. A month later, however, the teacher expelled him. Most students in shamisen schools are past middle age; young students are very rare, and Satoh was one of the few in his school. He learned the skills and music so fast that the older students, jealous of his talent, got angry at the teacher for teaching Satoh so quickly what they had spent many years learning. They threatened to leave if Satoh didn't, and in the end he was expelled. After that he continued to study out of love for the instrument, but he did not plan to become a professional shamisen player. The main reasons were the feeling of confinement he experienced in the world of traditional Japanese music, and the fact that none of his teachers fascinated or inspired him.

In 1975, Satoh enrolled at Tokai University, School of Marine Science and Technology, in hopes of eventually becoming a ship captain. In his junior year, 1977, he went to a concert by tsugaru-shamisen player Chisato Yamada, and was profoundly affected by the artistry of Yamada's performance. Yamada did not display a brilliant technique or fast fingering--his style, in fact, was rather simple--but Satoh felt that his music was truly art. He immediately decided to move to Hirosaki, Aomori prefecture (in northern Japan), where Yamada lives, and become his student. (Tsugaru is the former name of the area of Aomori prefecture where the tsugaru shamisen originated). In 1981, Satoh became a tsugaru-shamisen teacher of the Yamada school, and returned to Tokyo. In 1982 and 1983 he won the National Tsugar-Shamisen Contest.

In 1983, Satoh was playing and teaching traditional tsugaru-shamisen music of the Yamada school (as he still does today). In that year he started to play outside the shamisen community of musicians and fans, which was governed by the iemoto system--the licensing system for teachers of traditional Japanese arts. Under this system, each shamisen player is affiliated with a school, to which he or she is closely connected both socially and financially. Satoh's activities outside the community included solo and group performances in other musical fields such as jazz, rock and free improvisation. He played at concert halls, jazz clubs and other venues, mainly in Tokyo. The purpose was not only to seek his own musical style and new possibilities for the tsugaru-shamisen, but also to avoid being completely dependent on the iemoto system, which he felt was a major obstacle to the future development of shamisen music. Over the entire year 1984 Satoh gave monthly solo concerts, sometimes with guest musicians, at Kid-Airac Hall in Tokyo. In 1985 he started "Tsugaru-Shamisen NOW," an occasional concert series in which he performed with musicians from various fields. John Zorn was the guest musician at the first of these concerts. The guest musicians at the most recent one, held in November 1994, were sax player Kazutoki Umezu and violinist Keisuke Ohta.

To further this new stage in the development of his music, Satoh also went on concert tours abroad. He left Japan for the first time in 1983, to play in Edmonton, Canada, and from that year until 1991 he played outside Japan once or twice a year. He visited the United States to play solo concerts, mostly in New York, in May and November, 1984. After one of these concerts, John Zorn asked Satoh to record with him. They made a recording the next day at a studio in New York, and it was released in 1985 with the title Ganryujima. In October of that year Satoh returned to the U.S. and Canada to give 17 concerts. One of these, a concert with Zorn at Club Roulette in New York, was recorded and released as a cassette tape later titled Chushingura. In 1986 Satoh was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship to study music for a year.

In April 1988, Satoh participated in several studio recording sessions in New York with musicians in the field of free improvisation. These included guitarists Bill Frisell, Fred Frith and Elliott Sharp; also sax players Steve Coleman and Ned Rothenberg; turntable player Christian Marclay; and drummers Ikue Mori, Samm Bennett, Joey Baron and Gerry Hemingway. The recordings were released in 1989 in a CD titled Rodan. In the same year Satoh directed the music for a film called Tsugaru. In 1990 he held a series of six bimonthly free improvisation concerts called Rodan. And in 1992 he formed his own group, the Satoh Michihiro Super Band, which played improvisational music based on melodies written mainly by Satoh. The group continues to perform; its name was changed to Satoh Michihiro Tsugaru Shamisen Gakudan (Band) in 1994. Their studio recording of 1993-4 was released in 1995 as a CD titled Natsu Yoi Matsuri. Besides Satoh, the current members are shakuhachi (traditional Japanese flute) player Shozan Tanabe, bassist Joji Sawada, drummer Yasuhiro Yoshigaki, and taiko (traditional Japanese drum) players Shigeri and Kaori Kizu. Satoh also made two CDs of traditional Japanese music, in 1993 and 1994. Since 1995 he has given a series of solo concerts in Tokyo called Corridor of Sound. From May 25 to 27, 1996, he played at the International New Jazz Festival in Moers, Germany.

---

Tetsu Saitoh

Double bass player, composer, and arranger

Tetsu Saitoh was born October 27, 1955 in Tokyo, Japan. He began playing the bass when he was 22. He taught himself initially, but soon began studying with bassists Keizo Mizoiri (his former high school classmate) and Nobuyoshi Ino (to whom Mizoiri had introduced him). At that time Saitoh practiced in the daytime at Gaya, an art gallery and live music club in his neighborhood. Gaya's owner liked his playing and asked him to perform on stage in the evening. Thus Saitoh began playing free jazz before an audience about twice a month, with such musicians as alto sax player Kazutoki Umezu, pianist Yoriyuki Harada, baritone sax player Shoji Ukaji, and pianist Katsuyuki Itakura, all of whom played regularly at Gaya. In the early '80s, Saitoh was also a member of Kuchu Sampo (Walk in the Cosmos), a collaborative group of artists, musicians and dancers. After Gaya closed its doors in 1984, he joined percussionist Masahiko Togashi's group, where he spent six months before moving to the group led by guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi. In May of 1986, Saitoh recorded his first album, the unaccompanied solo effort Tokio Tango.

Saitoh began two important musical activities in 1986: the playing of tango music, and the musical directorship of the theater group TAO. It was on the advice of cellist Keiki Midorikawa that Saitoh started playing tango. In the same year he joined a tango orchestra, as a bassist and arranger, and had the opportunity to play with Osvaldo Pugliese when the orchestra performed in Buenos Aires. Having long been fascinated by the music of Astor Piazzolla, Saitoh formed a group in 1989 to play Piazzolla's music, and in February 1990 they recorded Tetsu Plays Piazzolla. Since then he has occasionally organized groups for the purpose of playing Piazzolla's music. His current group, started in 1995, is called Contrabajeando and consists of two or three double basses, a bandoneon, and a piano.

Sahara, an original play performed before the public in October 1986, was the first production by the theater group TAO for which Saitoh directed the musical composition, arrangement, and performance. He has since served as musical director on all of TAO's productions, including Garcia Lorca's Black Pudding (performed in 1987); the three-part White-Whiskered Lear, based on Shakespeare (Part I performed in 1989, Part II in 1991, and Part III in 1993); Media Machine and Hamlet Machine, both based on works by Heiner Müllar and performed in 1991; andLa Danaide performed in1996.

In addition, Saitoh has cultivated collaborations with Japanese traditional instrumentalists, as well as with Korean musicians and dancers. In 1990 he established the String Quartet of Tokio with 17-string koto player Hideaki Kuribayashi, tsugaru samisen player Michihiro Satoh, and guitarist Koichi Hiroki. That year they recorded part of the CD The String Quartet of Tokio & Orchestra. Soon thereafter Saitoh expanded the String Quartet into an 11-piece orchestra which included such Japanese traditional instruments as 17-string koto, tsugaru samisen, sho, hichikiri, and biwa, and this expanded group completed the CD, which was released in 1992. In 1991 Saitoh organized a group called Blue Poles of Lear for the performance of TAO's White-Whiskered Lear, Part II. The group consisted of Saitoh on bass, and seven koto players on a total of 15 standard and 17-string kotos. After the play, Saitoh kept the group together and in 1991 recorded Blue Poles of Lear with eight koto players. (The final piece was recorded in January of 1992, with guitarist Koichi Hiroki joining the group.) The CD was released in 1992.

In May of '92, Saitoh and saxophonist Kazutoki Umezu traveled to Chin-do and Seoul for a recording with Korean shamans who play traditional Korean instruments. (Umezu's CD Shin Myong, released in 1993, includes a piece recorded with Saitoh at that time.) It was on this recording tour that Saitoh first met and played music with Korean shaman Kim Suk Chul, whose musical style and ideas continue to make a strong impact on him. Soon after that, Saitoh arranged a concert to bring together Japanese and Korean musicians. The first Eurasian Echoes concert was performed in Tokyo over a three-day period in July of 1992. Saitoh played bass, and conducted a 14-piece orchestra--made up of a bass, an oboe, a guitar, and Japanese and Korean traditional instruments--which played his original compositions. Saitoh also went to Korea with Fumio Itabashi and Kazue Sawai for the Eurasian Echoes concerts performed in Seoul in June 1993 and June 1994. (A Mongolian musician participated in the 1994 concert.) The recording of one of the 1993 concerts was released that year as a CD entitled Eurasian Echoes. Two studio recordings made in Seoul at the same time were also released as CDs entitled Unicorn and Session. A CD of the 1994 concerts has just come out. Saitoh also went to Korea in December of 1992 to play in a modern dance performance, and to make a studio recording with Kim Suk Chul and other Korean shamans. The CDs of this recording are Shin Myong (same pronunciation as the Umezu CD cited above, but different Chinese characters), and Salp'uli, released in 1993 and '94, respectively. Saitoh remained in Korea following the Eurasian Echoes concert in June of '94, to make a recording with Korean shamans from Chin-do. (The recording has not yet been released).

Also in 1994, Saitoh performed in the West for the first time since his 1988 tour of North America with a free jazz trio made up of himself, baritone sax player Shoji Ukaji and drummer Sabu Toyozumi. In February of '94, Saitoh, Kazue Sawai and other musicians gave two concerts at the University of Hawaii, mainly to present the music of traditional Japanese instruments. In May, Saitoh and Sawai went to Europe to form a group called Fifth Season with bassist Barre Phillips, percussionist Alain Joule, and soprano sax player Michel Doneda. The group toured France, Belgium and Switzerland. For their studio recordings in France and Switzerland (not yet out) and Swiss tour, they were joined by two Swiss musicians, cellist Martin Schultz and violinist Hans Burgener. In August Saitoh traveled to France once again, to participate in the Avignon International Contrabass Festival, directed by Barre Phillips. In November of 1994, Saitoh went on an Asian tour in Korea, Laos and Thailand with the Tsuki no Tsubo trio (made up of himself, Itabashi and Sawai) and guitarist Koichi Hiroki. At some of the performances in Laos and Thailand, residents (children included) joined the group and sang local songs.

Saitoh's recent composition "Stone Out," commissioned by the koto group KOTO-VORTEX, was performed for the first time by the group in April of 1995. In September Saitoh went to Warsaw, Poland, for a music and dance performance at the large-scale retrospective exhibition of works by artist Magdalena Abakanowicz. In November he visited France and, with Michel Doneda and Alain Joule, formed the trio ARC (The name was later changed to L'ARC ET LE PUITS.). In the course of their tour of France, the trio made a recording with the participation of vocalist Antonella Talamonti. In December Saitoh and KOTO-VORTEX recorded Stone Out, which was released in April of this year.

---

Phew

Singer

Started out as a member of the legendary punk band Aunt Sally. In 1980 she collaborated with Sakamoto Ryuichi on the single Shukyoku. In '81 she and the members of Can made the album Phew. After taking some time off, Phew made a recording with former members of DAF and Neubauten. She subsequently released two albums with Anton Fier, Bill Laswell and others. Recently she is active in a wide range of projects, including Nuovo Tono, Phew Unit, a duo with Seiichi Yamamoto, and Big Picture.

Otomo Yoshihide

Turntable and guitar player

Otomo Yoshihide was born on August 1, 1959 in Yokohama, Japan. He spent his teenage years in Fukushima, about 300 kilometers north of Tokyo. Influenced by his father, an engineer, Otomo began making electrical devices such as a radio and an electronic oscillator. In junior high school, his hobby was making sound collages using open-reel tape recorders. This was his first experience creating music. Soon after entering high school he formed a band which played rock and jazz, with Otomo on guitar. It wasn't long, however, before he became a free jazz aficionado, listening to artists like Ornette Coleman, Erick Dolphy and Derek Bailey; and hearing music, both on disk and at concerts, by Japanese free jazz artists. The musician who influenced him most at that time was alto sax player Kaoru Abe (two of whose concerts he went to hear) and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi. For Otomo, this was a turning point--the point at which he decided to play free jazz.

In 1979 Otomo moved to Tokyo to attend university. While continuing to play jazz and punk rock, in his third and fourth years of university he took part in an ethnomusicology seminar directed by professor Akira Ebato. Otomo became increasingly involved in the study of ethnomusical history, and of two subjects in particular: Japanese popular music during World War II, and the evolution of Chinese musical instruments during the Cultural Revolution. In 1981 he went to Hainan, China with a group led by Ebato, to research ethnic music. In the same year he began playing free improvisation professionally--using guitars, tapes, radios, etc.--at Goodman, a live music club in Ogikubo, Tokyo, where he continued to play for about a year.

Otomo became very active in live performance in 1987. Until about 1990 he often played duo concerts with Junji Hirose (on sax and an original self-made instrument). In that period he also played in a band called No Problem, with Lim Soowoong (junk), Jun Numata (electric bass), Kenichi Saitoh (guitar) and Hirose; performed with Kan Mikami (vocals); and was a member of pianist Kyoko Kuroda's group ORT. Starting in 1990 Otomo collaborated extensively with other musicians, in a wide range of styles. He joined bassist Hideki Kato's group Player Piano ('90-'91), and organized a Japan tour with Hirose and percussionist David Moss ('90). That year, he also started his own band, Ground-0 (later Ground Zero). Until it disbanded in March 1998, the band was always at the core of his musical creativity, while it underwent several changes in style and membership.

Otomo first played outside Japan in 1991. In April of that year he took Ground-0 to Hong Kong to play with two local musicians (bass and drums) in the "Best of Indies" concert; and in December he played in Berlin with Koichi Makigami (vocals), Yuji Katsui (violin), Hiroshi Higo (bass), David Moss (percussion), and Frank Schulte (turntables). Since then, Otomo has played overseas every year.

Otomo has created and organized various bands and projects in addition to Ground Zero. He had two bands between '92 and '94: the Double Unit Orchestra, comprised of two groups which he conducted simultaneously; and Celluloid Machine Gun, which he described as the Hong Kong movie-style music world. Otomo also formed Mosquito Paper, which was active from December '93 to late '94. The name came from the slang term for Shanghai tabloid newspapers filled with gossip and fake news stories. In their performances, Otomo set to music not songs but text readings, seeking to bring about the emergence of something between music and speech. He has had many connections with the Hong Kong/Chinese music and movie scenes, especially in the early and middle '90s. Both the Celluloid Machine Gun and Mosquito Paper projects were eventually absorbed by Ground Zero, when the band launched its monumental work Revolutionary Pekinese Opera. Another of Otomo's major projects at that time was the Sampling Virus Project ('92 to '98), in which sampling processes were applied to musical works which were "passed around" among musicians. In this way, the sampling acted in much the same way computer viruses do--invading, multiplying in and transforming the works --thus bringing new works into being. Otomo developed the project through his various musical activities--solo work, collaborations with other musicians, his bands, etc. One example is Ground Zero/Project: Consume.

Since the disbanding of Ground Zero, Otomo's sound has changed greatly. The difference can be heard especially well in his current major projects: I.S.O., his trio with (drums, electronics) and Sachiko M (sampler); and Filament, his duo with Sachiko M. The sound, which tends to embrace simplicity, minimalism, and texture much more than dynamism and instrumental performance, contrasts sharply with the extreme chopping and plunderphonics ("plagiaristic" sampling) which used to characterize Otomo's style. In another departure, in July '99 he started a new jazz project based on his own concepts--a jazz quartet with Naruyoshi Kikuchi (saxes), Kenta Tsugami (saxes), Hiroaki Mizutani (bass) and Yasuhiro Yoshigaki (drums). (Half of the compositions played are those of jazz giants such as Charles Mingus, and the rest are Otomo's). He plans to keep the quartet together at least until the band has made a CD and appeared at the Music Unlimited festival in Wels, Austria, in November 1999.

In addition, Otomo has been very active as a co-founder and a side member of other groups and projects, the major ones being drummer Tony Buck's Peril ('92-'95); Hoppy Kamiyama's Optical*8 (March '93-late '94); violinist Jon Rose's Shopping project ('93-); vocalist Tenko's Dragon Blue ('92-); drummer Chris Cutler's P53 ('94-); vocalist Phew's Novo Tono ('94-); Les sculpteurs de vinyl with Sachiko M and French DJs ('96-); and his duo with Tenko, MicroCosmos ('98-).

Otomo has demonstrated an exceptional talent as a composer of movie/TV/video sound tracks. He has in particular enjoyed an excellent relationship with creators in the Chinese and Hong Kong film worlds (See Major Movie/TV/Video Sound Tracks). He also served as music director of the theater group Rinkogun from '92 to '95, creating the music for such works as Bird Man, Inu no Seikatsu, Hamlet Symbol, and Picnic Conductor.

Finally, mention should be made of Otomo's vital and wide-ranging writing activity. Since the eighties he has presented his ideas on music--from distribution problems in the music industry to sociocultural considerations of such topics as sampling and free improvisation--in his articles and essays for various magazines and books in Japan.

Aki Onda

Aki Onda is a self-taught electronic musician, composer, producer, and photographer.

Onda was born in Nara, Japan, on August 27, 1967. He was brought up in an unusual and eccentric environment that stimulated him artistically. His mother was a painter and his father was a university professor and former Olympic hockey player. He studied painting, textiles and photography from an early age, although he dropped out of formal education. Onda started his career as a photographer when he was 16 years old. His first assignment was to take photographs of musicians for magazines in Osaka and Kyoto. Through numerous photo shoots he became acquainted with many well-known musicians and decided to become a musician himself. He started making music with sampler and computer, and formed Audio Sports with Eye Yamatsuka and Nobukazu Takemura in Osaka in 1990. After releasing the group's first album, Onda moved to Tokyo and established himself as a producer. He soon became a sought-after studio technician, because of his in-depth knowledge of music production. As a result, he was involved in nearly 100 projects in Japan while still in his twenties. From '96 to '97, Onda lived in London and recorded his solo albums Beautiful Contradiction and Un Petit Tour, which reflected his visual and poetic sensibility. Soon he released two more albums: Precious Moment, in 2001, and Don't Say Anything, in 2002. All four albums are personal soundscapes that he calls "radio dramas." Each contains a different story, with or without text.

For the past several years, Onda has performed with multiple cassette Walkmans and electronics, using field-recording sounds that he has recorded himself as a diary for more than a decade. He released the first album of the series, "Cassette Memories" in 2003, under the title Ancient & Modern, followed by the second album, Bon Voyage!

Onda has performed at The Kitchen, Roulette, Sculpture Center (New York), Images Festival (Toronto), Send + Receive (Winnipeg), Transitio_mx (Mexico City), Tokyo Performing Arts Market 2005 (Tokyo), Atlantic Waves, LMC Festival (London), Argos Festival (Brussels), STEIM (Amsterdam), Impakt Festival (Utrecht), Fylkingen (Stockholm), and many other festivals and venues on four continents.

Between 2000 and 2003, Onda was a visiting composer at the Electro-Acoustic Music Studio at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, of which composer Jon Appleton serves as director.

Along with his activities on the music scene, Onda has been exploring expression through photography. In 2001 and 2002, he had two photo exhibitions at Anthology Film Archives in New York City, which is run by filmmaker Jonas Mekas.

In the year 2005, Onda started the audio-visual project Cinemage, "image for cinema," or "homage for cinema." It's composed of slide projections of still photo images and improvised music.

Onda's critical thought and unique sensibility in understanding music are manifest in numerous articles and reviews he has written for Japanese magazines such as Musee and Studio Voice. Many underground musicians and composers in Japan have become aquainted with each other through Onda's writings.

He has collaborated with such artists as Alan Licht, Loren Conners, Michael Snow, Shelley Hirsch, Butch Morris, Ikue Mori, Haco, Noël Akchote, Jac Berrocal, Dan Warburton, Jean-François Pauvros, Jean-Jacques Birgé Bernard Vitet, Blixa Bargeld, SFT, Steve Beresford, Linda Sharrock, Oren Ambarchi, Akio Suzuki, Otomo Yoshihide, Jyoji Sawada, Toshimaru Nakamura, and Tujiko Noriko.