Renowned Tokyo bassist brings his "weighty noise" to Langton for
improvisations and more ...
IN CONCERT
Bassist Tetsu Saitoh
with koto players
Shoko Hikage, Brett Larner and Ryuko Mizutani
Tickets $8/$6 members, students, seniors
San Francisco In a rare US appearance, doublebassist Tetsu Saitoh performs
at New Langton Arts Saturday, April 10 in a concert with koto players Shoko
Hikage, Brett Larner and Ryuko Mizutani. Saitoh has made a career of fusing
traditional Asian folk and classical aesthetics with contemporary Western
technique and free jazz sensibility. An improviser to the core, he is drawn
to highly rhythmic styles, and has been influenced by genres as diverse as
Argentine tango and Korean instrumental music. Saitoh¹s Langton performance
and collaboration continues a rich ongoing exchange between Asian and
Californian improvisers and creative musicians. The concert features
orignal compositions as well as freely improvised music exploring the
timbral possibilities of a string quartet with the unlikely instrumentation
of four kotos and a doublebass. New Langton Arts is located at 1246
Folsom Street in San Francisco. Tickets are $8 general admission, $6
members, students and seniors. For information or reservations call 415 626
5416 or visit www.newlangtonarts.org.
Saitoh is known in Japan and beyond for a unique musical sensibility which
combines the instruments and forms of Asian music with a contemporary
improviser¹s love of texture and unexplored sounds. He describes his
aesthetic in a 1992 interview in Jazz Hiyo magazine:
" Š there¹s a kind of noise that¹s different from the noise you hear at a
construction site or the sound of cars Š I think of it as the noise of
acoustic sound, or a noise that emerges in a location where you have a view
of the vastness of the Chinese or Eurasian continent. The background is
immense. This is the kind of sound you produce to identify your tiny self
in the universe. If you were in the middle of a vast plain, I don¹t think
you¹d make beautiful belcanto-type sound. When you¹re in darkness, or
facing the sea, or looking at a big blaze, you shout to confirm your own
existence and produce a weighty noise.ý
The bassist¹s koto collaborations began in the early Œ90s. The koto is a
13-string plucked zither that dates back to Japanese court music in the
seventh century A.D. In recent years, the koto has become popular in
improvised, experimental and contemporary art music. Saitho has long been
drawn to the koto¹s sonic palette, and his music exploits the full range of
techniques plucking, bowing, strumming, snapping to serve his musical
vision. At Langton, Saitoh and his collaborators play his composition Stone
Out, originally commissioned by the koto ensemble KOTO-VORTEX in 1995.
For more than 20 years the bassist, composer and bandleader has brought his
music to venues around the world, performing throughout Asia, Europe, Latin
America and the United States. Saitoh is musical director of the theater
group TAO in Tokyo, Japan, and has collaborated with Korean shamans,
Argentine tango virtuosi, free jazz superstars and the cream of Europe¹s
crop of new music improvisers, including fellow bassists Jo‰lle L‚andre and
Barre Phillips. He lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.
Shoko Hikage regularly performs in improvised dance and music contexts
throughout the Bay Area. She earned two degrees in koto performance in
Japan, and is also versed in Korean and Japanese traditional dance and
drumming, as well as improvisational dance forms. She has performed at the
San Francisco World Music Festival (2001) and the San Francisco Butoh
Festival (2000), San Francisco; and the Japan Society, NY (2001). Hikage
lives and works in San Francisco.
Koto player Brett Larner is a Vancouver, British Columbia-based performer,
improviser, composer and teacher. While living in Tokyo, he immersed
himself in the contemporary koto and electroacoustic improvisation scenes,
and has worked with Toshimaru Nakamura, Kazue Sawai, Soemon and Taku
Sugimoto. In addition to his koto work, Larner leads the longitudinal mode
guitar ensemble m-7, which has recorded for the French label A Bruit Secret
and Japan¹s IMJ.
Ryuko Mizutani, a native of Japan, has performed contemporary and
experimental koto music at venues throughout Japan and the United States,
including the Bang On A Can new music festival in New York (1992). For more
than 15 years, she has studied both classical and modern koto under masters
Tadao and Kazue Sawai. Ryuko was been awarded an Overseas Study Program for
Artists (1999) fellowship from the Japanese government to study with Anthony
Braxton and Alvin Lucier in the United States. She lives in Rochester, NY.
Cost: $8