Off Site

When Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) was organizing concerts for Jason Kahn, who was to visit Japan in October of 1998, Tetuzi Akiyama (guitar, electronics) set up a gig for Kahn, himself, Nakamura and Taku Sugimoto (guitar) at one of Akiyama's regular performance venues, Bar Aoyama. The gig on October 15 at this tiny club in Shibuya, Tokyo, turned out to be the premiere concert of the monthly series The Improvisation Meeting at Bar Aoyama. Each session in this series featured Akiyama, Nakamura, Sugimoto and a guest artist.

In November of '99, the series was renamed The Experimental Meeting at Bar Aoyama. Then, in August 2000, it was moved to the gallery Off Site in Yoyogi, Tokyo, and renamed Meeting at Off Site. Sugimoto retired from the series after the February 2001 concert. Akiyama and Nakamura continued it, performing with a guest artist at each session. In January of 2003, they changed its format: now each concert consists entirely of a guest musician's solo performance. So that the the audience can fully appreciate the guests' music, Nakamura and Akiyama do not participate in the sessions.

Tetuzi Akiyama

Guitar, electronics, viola, and self-made instrument player

Born in Tokyo, April 13, 1964.

Tetuzi Akiyama is a highly unique and experimental guitarist heavily applying free improvisation and noise. Besides guitar, he also plays electronics, viola, and self-made instruments.

Akiyama became an enthusiastic hard rock fan when he was eleven years old, and started playing electric guitar at the age of thirteen. Later, he also came to be very interested in free improvisation and classical music. He formed the improvised music band Madhar in 1987. He also started playing classical viola, and formed the Hikyo String Quintet in 1994. The band, which played avant-garde improvised classical music, consisted of a viola, two cello, and two violin players, and included Taku Sugimoto on cello. Sugimoto soon left the band, which thus became a quartet. Later that year, Akiyama and Sugimoto launched their guitar duo, Akiyama-Sugimoto. They played gigs in New York in 1995, and in the Midwest (including Chicago and Detroit) in '96. For about a year starting in early 1994, Akiyama was also a member of Nijiumu, one of guitarist Keiji Haino's bands.

Recently Akiyama has two improvised music projects: Sutekina Tea Time, a duo with Takashi Matsuoka (guitar, vocal); and Mongoose, a trio with Sugimoto and Utah Kawasaki (analog synthesizer). Since 1998, together with Sugimoto and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-imput mixing board), he has been organizing an inspiring monthly concert series, The Improvisation Meeting at Bar Aoyama (renamed The Experimental Meeting in '99, and Meeting at Off Site in 2000).