Asian Improv aRts Midwest

Admission Free | Free Parking

This year Shubukai will be presenting its annual 43rd performance. The foundational goal is to maintain aesthetic integrity through continued training and performance in the traditional arts, including taiko, shamisen, and classical dance.

This year, we will welcome Fujima Yurino from Australia, Grandmaster Hyakkyou Fukuhara, a narimono and bamboo flute specialist from Tokyo. She is one of a handful of certified performers from the traditional Fukuhara clan who is performing actively in the Kabuki-Nagauta tradition. Hyakkyou works in the classical tradition and in more contemporary settings, such as in modern music collaborations and creating media arts as well; and Puppet Artist Tom Lee, a student of Nishikawa Koryu V, performing traditional kuruma ningyo, (cart puppetry). The Toyoaki Shamisen ensemble will provide live accompaniment, and Tsukasa Taiko will also be featured, performing traditional taiko.

The sleekness and effervescence of jazz meets the dynamism and boldness of the taiko drum in a concert of unreleased materials from 1970’s original taiko theater – the Gintenkai in Tokyo. Classical masters Hyakkyou Fukuhara (flute/percussion), Chizuru Kineya (shamisen) and Shijuro Tachibana (kabuki dance), will be joined by a critically acclaimed roster of jazz artists including poet and musician Coco Elysses; the fiercely creative jazz/reggae/world music specialist Hamid Drake; JoVia Armstrong, the winner of Black Women in Jazz Awards’ 2014 Best Black Female Percussionist of the Year, and, direct from France, drummer and improviser Yuko Oshima.

The resonating thunder of taiko drums, the precision of traditional Japanese dance and the delicately emotive sound of the Shamisen share the stage when the multigenerational Tsukasa Taiko performs a fascinating and highly entertaining mix of original compositions and arrangements in a broad range of musical styles from ozashiki (geisha chamber music) to minyo (folk music) to ohayashi (classical/folk/theater music) and matsuri taiko (festival taiko music). Joining the 30 members of Chicago’s Taiko Legacy will be San Francisco’s Melody Takata and the GenRyu Arts and three classical music grandmasters from Japan: Chizuru Kineya, Hyakkyou Fukuhara and Shijuro Tachibana.