Masaoka/Nakamura/Garton: Music from Japan, 2017
2/19/2017




The organization Music from Japan has sponsored remarkable concerts of new and traditional Japanese music since 1975. This year they asked my friend and colleague Miya Masaoka to perform, and Miya asked renowned shakuhachi flute player Akikazu Nakamura and me to perform with her. Miya is a gifted improviser on the koto, and it was my honor and pleasure to do some real-time signal processing as she and Aki played.



In addition to the above recording made of the performance, I have two recordings of our rehearsal. Unfortunately, however, these recordings are only of the processed output from my laptop. None of the original shakuhachi or koto sound is present (we were very short on time and were not able to get a 'live' recorder set until just before the concert). So these are missing the entire first few minutes of each piece -- solo koto and shakuhachi -- but they are kind of interesting and fun to hear.