Following on from a sold out weekend of musicians and artists from Japan's fervent and chaotic music scene, an extra chance to catch some of the most unique artists from Japan. Tonight shamisen player and vocalist Tanaka Yumiko performs a very special one-off set with the great improvising guitarist John Russell, and sound artist and composer Ken Ikeda performs on SD404 (string decoder) - an original primitive instrument made by nails and rubber bands, reconfirming the relation between body and instrument.

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TANAKA YUMIKO

Tanaka received an MA in aesthetics and art history from Tokyo University of the Arts. She studied Gidayu recitation with Gidayu recitation artist and Living National Treasure Komanosuke Takemoto, and became a disciple of the Gidayu-shamisen master, the late Kinshi Nozawa who was also a living national treasure in Bunraku Puppet Theater. Since her debut performance in 1981 in Tokyo, Tanaka has been very active as a Shamisen player and vocalist, not only in the world of traditional Japanese music, but also in contemporary music, new music, and various styles of theater. In 2009, she became the general holder of Important Intangible Cultural Property as a member of Gidayu-bushi Preservation Society.




KEN IKEDA

Ken Ikeda is a sound artist and composer born in Tokyo (1964), currently a resident in New York and London. He has been playing SD404 (string decoder), an original primitive instrument made by nails and rubber bands, reconfirming the relation between body and instrument. He has previously collaborated with contemporary artists Mariko Mori, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Tadanori Yokoo.




JOHN RUSSELL

“for Russell the fingerboard is apparently multiple. He finds new tones in the same place, new relationships in the same gesture. A second trip across the fingerboard is always a different excursion. The harmonic is a transparent sound: silence and ambient sound pass through it. It accounts for Russell’s unhurried pace and his sense of order, even when he’s playing fast: there’s simply so much going on.” - Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure



John Russell got his first guitar in 1965 while living in Kent and began to play in and around London from 1971 onwards. An early involvement with the emerging free improvisation scene (from 1972) followed, seeing him play in such places as The Little Theatre Club, Ronnie Scott’s, The Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Musicians’ Co-Op and the London Musicians’ Collective.

From 1974 his work extended into teaching, broadcasts (radio and television) and touring in the United Kingdom and, ever extensively, in other countries around the world . He has played with many of the world’s leading improvisers and his work can be heard on over 50 CDs. In 1981, he founded QUAQUA, a large bank of improvisers put together in different combinations for specific projects and, in 1991, he started MOPOMOSO which has become the UK’s longest running concert series featuring mainly improvised music.



John Russell website


DAICHI YOSHIKAWA

Daichi Yoshikawa is one of the most interesting young improvising musician currently based in London. Using a variety of inverted, diverted and reinvented electronic and acoustic devices he strikes a constantly evolving balance between harsh atonal feedback and elegant high-frequency constructions.

TETSUZI AKIYAMA

Tetuzi Akiyama plays the guitar with primitive and practical implications, by adding a desire of own to the instrument's characteristic nature in minimal and straight method. Besides making variety of solo albums, he has made many albums in collaboration with highly praised artists such as Jozef Van Wissem, Donald McPherson, Greg Malcolm, Bruce Russell, Gunter Muller, Jason Kahn, Michel Henritzi, Phantom Limb, Gul3, Tim Barnes, Oren Ambarchi, Martin Ng and Alan Licht, just to name a few.

ROSS LAMBERT

Northern Irish (and London-based) guitarist and ‘magnetic and vibrating sources’ player Ross Lambert, has in his own words, the following fundamental and simultaneous approaches to live performance: to play as though it was both the first time and also the last; and to able to differentiate between what is good and worth conserving and what is not. Ross has been involved in, initiated and been a connector between a very wide variety of improvisatory music since his first exposure and (immediate) commitment to it, in Sheffield via Derek Bailey during the mid-1980s. Although under-recorded (he claims ‘by choice’), Ross has worked with a huge number of musicians from around the world, including Tetuzi Akiyama, Ami Yoshida, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Paul Hession, Rhodri Davies, John Butcher and Evan Parker, as well as his close friends Eddie Prevost, Seymour Wright, and Sebastian Lexer.

SEYMOUR WRIGHT / saxophone

“Saxophonist Seymour Wright has emerged as the most important saxophonist of his generation. . . [He] shows a command of the saxophone which in contrast to most ‘non-idiomatic’ playing – cynically translated as ‘make your saxophone sound like anything other than a saxophone’ – has deep roots in a tradition of playing that goes back to Frankie Trumbauer, Coleman Hawkins and Willie Smith.” - Brian Morton