Monday 2 March 2026, 7.30pm
A powerfully lyrical improvisor, Akira Sakata has been active on the free jazz scene for more than fifty years, with only limited international exposure.
For this event, we're delighted to present two sets featuring Akira Sakata: a trio set alongside longtime collaborator Rie Nakajima and London based painter, Yuko Shiraishi, and a duo set alongside Beijing-based musician and poet, Yan Jun.
Also on the bill a very welcome return to OTO for O YAMA O, the quartet of Marie Roux, Billy Steiger, Keiko Yamamoto, and Rie Nakajima.
Akira Sakata (Sax, Clarinet,vo,composer)
Visiting prof. of Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences.
Visiting prof. Graduate SchooL of Biosphere Science Hiroshima Univ.
Born in Kure-city, Hiroshima in 1945. Studied marine biology at Hiroshima university. Formed a group Saibo-bunretsu (Cell fission) in Tokyo in 1969, Sakata's long lasting music quest has begun.
1972, he has Joined Yamashita Yosuke Trio. The trio performed at many jazz festivals including Maers New Jazz Festival, Berlin Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Festival and Newport Jazz Festival.etc.
He made many sessions such as Jimmy Lions, Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald, Manfred Schoof. Han Bennik, Bill Laswell, Pete Cosy, Hamid Drake, John Zone, Ronald “Shanon”Jackson, Sonny Sharrock, Toshinori Kondo,DJ Krush,Jim O’Rourke, Chris Corsano, Darin Gray, Keiji Haino, Yoshihide Otomo ,Charles Hayward, Roger Turner, Andrea Centazzo, Matz Gustafsson, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Terry Ex, DJ Sniff ,Rie Nakajima, Kazuhisa Uchihashi and more....
Recent his band are “ARASHI” (w, Johan Berthling and Paal Nilsen-Love)
“Bonjintan” (w, Jim O’Rourke, Giovanni Di Domenico, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto), “Entasis” (w, Giotis Damianidis, Giovanni di Domenico, Aleksander Skoric) and “Akira Sakata SOS” (w, Nana Omori, Manabu Sakata).
He is going around many places in the world and doing many kind of work.
Till today he doesn’t stop moving and doing.
Rie Nakajima is a sculptor living in London. She creates sounds using a combination of motorised devices and everyday objects in the context of installations and performances.
Her art exists on the borderline of sculpture and music, open to chance and the influence of others. Improvisation is at the heart of her work.
The first major solo exhibition was held at IKON Gallery in Birmingham in 2018. She has also worked with Museo Vostell Malpartida (Cáceres), Annely Juda Gallery (London), Association de Le Cyclop (Milly la Forêt), ShugoArts (Tokyo), Donaueschinger Music Festival (Donaueschinger), Festival Météo (Mulhouse), Music for the Eyes Festival (Varmlands), Deep Time Festival (Edinburgh), Punkt Festival (Kristiansand), All Ears Festival (Oslo), Festival Archipel (Geneva), Cafe OTO (London) and many others. Collaboration is an essential part of her practice with frequent collaborators, Pierre Berthet, Angharad Davies, David Cunningham, Keiko Yamamoto, Max Eastley, Miki Yui, hans.w.koch, Marie Roux, Billy Steiger, David Toop and Akira Sakata.
Shiraishi was born in Tokyo in 1956 and moved to London to study painting at Chelsea School of Art in 1978. She is recognised for her often large and minimal abstract canvases exploring the formal properties of colour and compositon.
Bands of contrasting colours and tones ranging from delicate layered organic brushwork to sections of heavier grainy and combed surfaces interplay to create formal rather than illusionistic space.
Shiraishi’s stunning use of colour, tone and composition make her works seductive to the eye and the senses yet at the same time fascinate as intellectual explorations into the formal language of painting.
Alongside her paintings, Shiraishi is also known for her architectural and conceptual projects such as Space Elevator Tea House (2009) and Netherworld (2013).
Shiraishi has exhibited widely across Europe, Japan, and the UK, and her work is held in major international public collections.
In this special collaboration, Shiraishi will join Sakata and Nakajima with spoken words.
yan jun, a musician and poet based in beijing.
he works on experimental music and improvised music. he uses noise, field recording, body and concept as materials.
sometimes he goes to audience’s home for playing a plastic bag.
“i wish i was a piece of field recording.”
yanjun.org
For this event, Yuko will read this poem by her mum, Kazuko Shiraishi, called ‘ bus stop'. This is the English translation of it:
BUS STOP
On top of the shifting sand a
Shadow is seeping in like a dot
It is a bus stop
No sign telling from where to where
There is no one
To answer all the questions
Like purpose and what then or
Why
Even what is called meaning
Has worn out and. in the old dictionary
Now gritty and sticking out a stone tongue just laughs
(Even the little room inside the brain
The wind has flown off somewhere
So . . .)
Saying so
I go out get on my bike but even though I get on
I don't have a destination but to go back
Inside, too
That place also is a destination that doesn't exist
Maybe the bus stop. has come to the door
And might be building a fire
Maybe the bus stop with a huge ancient eye
Like an iguana might be watching. passengers
There might be an angel lying face down like a puppy
Pretending to be asleep
There is Sister Maria who became
A green birthmark simply because she was afraid of committing adultery
Also sweat-soaked deserters
In dirty combat boots who can't even become devils. or. lazy angels
The bus stop may be watching them
Smudging. in the color of sand
Around the eyes with the shifting sand
Something that is a dot
On the shifting sand!
Certainly existing that
Phantom existence!
_______
from ‘Let Those Who Appear’, Kazuko Shiraishi
New Directions Publishing
Translated by Samuel Grolmes & Yumiko Tsumura
O YAMA O is with Marie Roux, Billy Steiger, Keiko Yamamoto, and Rie Nakajima
“How often are we in such intimate closeness to the materials of sound, the physicality of a naked voice, without chairs, microphones, distance, so conscious of light, climate, atmosphere, the nearness of other bodies, the permeability of a structure that is outside as much as in?” - David Toop
Formed of artist Rie Nakajima, artist Keiko Yamamoto, percussionist and photographer Marie Roux and violin player Billy Steiger, O Yama O explores a certain domestic and democratic quality of everyday life, born through associations to folk music of Japan and a folding of myth, tradition, and routine; the non-spectacular and the sublime. They move between pop and the philosophical, defined by the overall space afforded to texture and movement. In small, delicate sound an intimate musical climate is established that reflects on life, telling stories of improvised clockwork, whispered dreams, small movements of the hand and the rhythm to be found in the shuffle of a deck of cards.
The group have performed since 2014 at venues and festivals such as Ikon Gallery, Wysing Arts Centre, Supernormal, Borealis Festival, Mayhem, allEars Festival, Empty Gallery, Novas Frequencias, LCMF, Hybrida, Somerset House, Hombroich raketenfestival, Vostell Museum, reiheM and many more.
https://www.rienakajima.com/_work/_collaborationsetc/OYAMAO.html
@oyamaoooo
