Events

Tatsu Aoki brings back the Sudden Impact series with its doorway to Autumn full streaming event, providing a platform for Chicago’s musical artists to create and collaborate, and conduct musical experiments.

Rami Atassi is a musician, improviser, and guitarist based in Chicago. His work is a combination of the technical and emotional, a balance of intellectual curiosity and visceral drive. Through guitar and electronics he finds an outlet for his endless fascination with harmony, texture, space, and feeling. Over the last decade he has recorded, played, and toured with a diverse group of musicians, including: The Caleb Willitz Band, Tatsu Aoki, Ed Wilkerson, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Mike Staron, Ryan Suzuka & Blow Wind Blow, Jeff Breakey, Rob Reid, Bassel & the Supernaturals.

Join us on:
facebook.com/HairpinArtsCenter/live/
or
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbO-hIP2HRas5G5sOt4Xuew

Bassist Tatsu Aoki gathers an amazing band together for another night of electric sounds, this time with special guest Coco Elysses on percussion.

• Tatsu Aoki: bass
• Charles Rumback: drums
• Rami Atassi: guitar
• Tiger Tanaka: guitar
• Coco Elysses: percussion

Tune in at: twitch.tv/elasticartschicago

AIRMW Livestream: Episode 09
Friends of Asian Improv aRts Midwest
Sunday, September 20, 2020
7:00 PM CDT

STREAM.AIRMW.ORG

Please join us for Episode 09.

Join us for the ninth installment of AIRMW Livestream featuring local, national, and international artists from the global AIRMW network. Featuring Japanese classical dance by Yuuka Shiratori (Tokyo), electronic music by Kiku Hibino (Chicago), Tsugaru Shamisen by Nobuto Yamanaka (Japan), Chromic Duo: Lucy Yao & Dorothy Chan (New York), pipa by Wu Man (China).

Yuuka Shiratori – Classical Japanese Dance

Grandmaster of Hanayagi School of Japanese Classical Dance, Leader of KAORUNOKAI, Chairman of the NPO SHIKUNSHI,  Representative of the office YUI

Born in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture, Shiratori began her dancing career at the early age of three studying with the Hanayagi School of Japanese Classical Dance. As a young adult, she was admitted to the prestigious Takarazuka Music School as a top student of that year.

After dancing for the Takarazuka Revue, she received a Master’s License from Hanayagi School of Japanese Classical Dance. Since then she has been dancing and teaching traditional dance. She has performed and hosted workshops all over the world with appearances in venues including Washington DC, Minneapolis, New York, and Singapore. She hosts lectures, demonstrations, and performances inside and outside Japan for local businesses including etiquette class for traditional inns.

In 2005, she established NPO SHIKUNSHI, an organization to increase a sense of Japanese identity amongst Japanese citizens. Since then, she has worked as an activist who enriches people’s lives through Japanese traditional culture. This effort has become her new life work in addition to performing.

The main activities of NPO SHIKUNSHI include regularly hosting workshops of “Kimono Dressing and Graceful movement”, and offering classes for children, commissioned by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, about Japanese traditional cultures. SHIKUNSHI also holds classes, workshops, and seminars through Project WAMORI on Japanese culture including Sado (the tea ceremony), Rakugo (comic storytelling), Japanese Classical Dance, and kimono dressing.

In 2012, Hanayagi established a school called OUKASANJYUKU for Japanese women to learn and transmit the Japanese heart and soul to the next generation.

2014, She was awarded HIGASHI KUNINOMIYA Culture reward.

Kiku Hibino

Chicago-based and Japanese-born sound artist KIKÙ HIBINO has been producing cross-genre electronic music.  From chamber music for media productions to digital micro sound for art installations, he has collaborated internationally with a wide variety of artists and scholars, including Kawaguchi Takao (Dumb Type), Curtis Roads, Theaster Gates, Mike Weis (Zelienople) and Norma Field.

His recent work “Radial Categories” explores the new horizon of house music by layering the multiple sounds and noise that have different rhythm structures.

The publication, The Wire once described his music as  “trying to cram in as many memories as possible before it all disappears” and that the music “concerns itself with themes of capturing and preserving fleeting moments” (2007, issue 279).

He studied electronic music composition at the University of California at Santa Barbara under the mentorship of Curtis Roads and Karen Tanaka, and holds M.A. in media art and technology. B.A. in policy management from Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in 2002, where he minored electronic music composition under the mentorship of Toru Iwatake, Atau Tanaka, and Christopher Penrose.

Nobuto Yamakaka – Tsugaru Shamisen

Nobuto Yamanaka is a Tsugaru shamisen musician who has been given an “A” rank three times at the Tsugaru Shamisen workld competition. Nobuto trained for four years in Hirosaki, a city in Aomori prefecture.  He was only 15 years old when he started playing the Tsugaru shamisen.  He trained as an apprentice of the world famous master Chisato Yamada during his four years he trained.  He has performed in 36 countries worldwide.

Chromic Duo – Lucy Yao & Dorothy Chan

Chromic is an award-winning toy piano duo that brings new audiences together by creating new connections between classical music, electronics, and multimedia. Trained in piano, percussion, and contemporary practice, Chromic pushes the possibilities of genres and performance by reimagining canonical works, creating playful arrangements and commissioning new works that are transposable through digital and physical spaces. They are Dorothy Chan and Lucy Yao and are found at https://chromic.space.

Wu Man

Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso and leading ambassador of Chinese music, Wu Man has carved out a career as a soloist, educator, and composer giving her lute-like instrument—which has a history of over 2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. Through numerous concert tours she has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions. Her adventurous spirit and virtuosity have led to collaborations across artistic disciplines, allowing her to reach wider audiences as she works to cross cultural and musical borders. Her efforts were recognized when she was named Musical America’s 2013 “Instrumentalist of the Year,” marking the first time this prestigious award has been bestowed on a player of a non-Western instrument.

Having been brought up in the Pudong School of pipa playing, one of the most prestigious classical styles of Imperial China, Ms. Wu is now recognized as an outstanding exponent of the traditional repertoire as well as a leading interpreter of contemporary pipa music by today’s most prominent composers such as Tan Dun, Philip Glass, the late Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Bright Sheng, Chen Yi, and many others.  She is a founding member of Silkaroad Ensemble and touring internationally. She was the recipient of The Bunting Fellowship at Harvard University in 1998, and was the first Chinese traditional musician to receive The United States Artist Fellowship in 2008. She is also the first artist from China to perform at the White House. Wu Man is a Visiting Professor at her alma mater the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and at the Xi’an Conservatory of Music, and a Distinguished Professor at the Zhejiang Conservatory in her hometown. She has also served as Artistic Director of the Xi’an Silk Road Music Festival at the Xi’an Conservatory.

September 25, 2020

Kioto Aoki: Systems of Vision (Part 1) 

Systems of Vision is a two-part series featuring artists approaching sound as image-makers. These artists work within a performative framework that considers sound as a responsive system of the photographic & cinematic image. Malleable cycles of image as sound and sound as image create redefine what it means to see sound and hear an image. The first program invites artists Jonathan Chen (NYC), Hua Xi Zi (Chicago) & tooth (California), presenting work playing with the nature of the live feed. Curated by Kioto Aoki.

This event is a part of the Experimental Sound Studio’s The Quarantine Concerts series.

Hua Xi Zi works and thinks about light and the experience of seeing – in exploring the flowing life and one’s relation with outside systems. From celluloid film, analogue video signal to digital video processing, screen-based and optical projections, installed and performed, Xi Zi questions the existing methods of shadow-image production by experimenting alternative ways to “un-expose.” Her practice and research turned into the materiality while asking questions about spectatorship and participation – seeking for the tenderness that withholds freedom and forgiveness. Xi Zi’s recent installations exhibited at the 2019 Setouchi Triennale in Japan, 2019 New Blood Performance Festival in Chicago; other film works showcased at festivals such as 2018 Slamdance Film Festival, 2018 Seattle Asian American Film Festival and others.

Jonathan Chen is a composer, improviser, and sound artist who creates work through either conceptual foci or through experimentation with materials. His work for electronics often consist of thick layers of fluctuating sounds produced through multiple feedback systems, and at other times a more simple approach such as his installation Amplified (2010), which only involves the light amplification of a person’s voice. As both an electronicist and violinist/violist his improvisational work emphasizes timbre rather than pitch, either drawing from a wide palette or honing in on a single sound.

Chen’s work has been performed or installed at The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), The Soap Factory (Minneapolis), Sonic Circuits International Festival of Electronic Music and Art (Boston & NYC), 2 Kolegas & D22 (Beijing), Goldsmiths College (London), Chicago Cultural Center, Labor Sonar (Berlin), Eyedrum (Atlanta), The Flea (NYC), and many others. As an improviser he has appeared on Sky Landing: The Music of Yoko Ono by The Miyumi Project, an album produced by Yoko Ono, Robert W. Karr Jr. & Project 120 Chicago and released as a limited edition on the Asian Improv record label, and Light, a film by Lenora Lee and Tatsu Aoki which won “Best Experimental Film” at the Canada International Film Festival. Past performance credits also include Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Renaissance Society (Chicago), Resonance FM (London), Malta Festival (Poznan, Poland), The Stone (NYC), Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park (Chicago), The Smithsonian Institute, Sounds Like Now (NYC), Chicago Jazz Festival, The Metro (Chicago), Roulette (NYC), and many others.

Chen has a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York; a Master of Arts in Music Composition from Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT; and a Master of Music in Violin Performance from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. His work has been published by Leonardo Music Journal (MIT Press), the Deep Listening Institute, Asian Improv Records, Interval, Striking Mechanism, and Sound Studies (Routledge/Taylor & Francis), among others. He lives in New York City where he is Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Communication Technology at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York.

arc

arc refers to a process rather than an author. a curve within a void which makes something momentarily visible. material elements used to investigate immaterial states. framing the space of encounter as a site of unfixed ritual and sensory research. arc work has been presented at The Lab, San Francisco Cinematheque, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Massart Film Society (Boston), NDSM Treehouse (Amsterdam), and L’ Abominable (Paris/La Courneuve), among others.