「夏」Summer Thoughts, A Collaborative Piece by: Oda Hekiun & Fujima Yoshinojo

『夏』〜 Summer Thoughts

A Neoclassical collaborative performance by Japanese Calligrapher Artist Grandmaster Hekiun Oda with Shubukai’s Grandmaster Yoshinojo Fujima. Live music provided by: The Reduction Trio

The Reduction Trio: 

Tatsu Aoki is a leading advocate for the Asian American community, as well as a prolific composer and performer of traditional and experimental music forms, a filmmaker, and an educator. Born in Tokyo, 1957 into the Toyoakimoto artisan family, a traditional house for training and booking agents for geisha. Aoki was part of his family’s performance crew from the age of four. In the late 1960s, he shifted his energies from the traditional to American pop and experimental music. By the early 1970s, Aoki was active in Tokyo’s underground arts movement as a member of Gintenkai, an experimental ensemble that combined traditional music and new Western forms. In 1977, Aoki left Tokyo and is now one of the most in-demand performers of bass, shamisen, and taiko, contributing more than ninety recording projects and touring internationally during the last thirty-five years. Aoki is Founder and Artistic Director of Chicago Asian American Jazz Festival, which celebrated its twentieth year in 2015.

Jamie Kempkers is a Chicago-based cellist who studied with Dr. Robert Ritsema and recording with John Erskine at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He has been living in Chicago, playing improvised and/or experimental music since 2001. Past and current collaborators include, Tatsu Aoki, Jonathan Chen, Grandmaster Fujima Yoshinojo, Rainbow Milk and Dawei Wang.

Kioto Aoki is a performing artist specializing in Japanese traditional music, playing taiko, tsuzumi, and shamisen. She has been performing on stage since the age of 7, and is carrying on the lineage as part of a traditional Japanese performing arts family. She is active within the experimental and creative music scene in Chicago and the Bay Area as a member of Asian Improv aRts Midwest (AIRMW) and Tatsu Aoki’s The Miyumi Project. Kioto is an instructor at Tsukasa Taiko, a program of AIRMW as well as curatorial manager of the Arts Incubation program. Projects include Yoko Ono’s Skylanding, the Taiko Legacy / Reduction series at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Miyumi Project, and Reduction Quartet and Trio Ensemble.