Program

HITT est un artiste atypique. Chanteur, compositeur et musicien d’un style qui lui est bien personnel, il arrive à mêler rythmes rock et ballades jazzy. Son outil de prédilection : le piano est pour lui un élément indispensable dans la structure de ses mélodies, qui pourront vous emporter dans ce que l’on pourrait appeler une musicalité moderne qui flatte nos oreilles et nous réveille dans une fraîcheur trop rarement présente dans les classiques de la pop japonaise.

Description à venir.

The first traces of taiko go back 2000 years, most likely brought back from Korea or China. At that time, these drums were used when asking the favour of the gods, such as asking for rain for the crop. Similarly to many other Japanese arts, it is during the Edo era, 400 years ago that taiko got more sophisticated. It became a military instrument used to motivate the troops during wars, but also an instrument used during festivals and rituals.

It is only been 50 years, after the 2nd World War, that taiko has become an entertainment music instrument. Japan wanted to revamp its cultural past at that time. Concerts, training courses, demos started developing. Rapidly, professional groups started playing on national and international stages. The famous Kodo taiko, for instance, only goes back about 25 years.

The Shamisen is an instrument from the lute family. It is played on ones knees, Japanese style (seiza), i.e. buttock on the heels. Coming from China, it entered Japan quite late, around 1560. Its name derives directly from its Chinese counterpart, the san-hsien, which means three strings.

Popular instrument, it was first used to accompany traditional songs from the countryside, the minyô. During the Edo era, it became the geisha’s favorite instrument. The Shamisen is played on it’s own or as accompaniment to the Kabuki theater dances or to the stories from the bunraku puppet theater.

The Soubugen duo: Suginaka Hisao starts with the rock guitar before dedicating himself to the Shamisen in Aomori, instrument he will study for seven years with the master he follows on tour. In 1996, he leaves the nest and associates with Yuko Saaya to form the Soubugen duo which performs in Japan and abroad from 2003 during Winter Festivals in New-Zealand, but also in India and recently in Spain.
Yuko Saaya practices, since her dear childhood, dancing and traditional Japanese singing. In 1987, she enters the professional theater company hyosetsunomon, forming with which she works for 8 years before joining Suginaka Hisao.
Both artists are lead by the same passion for traditional instruments.

The duo will, in addition to its concerts, make a musical kimono presentation.

Shakuhachi, originating from China, made its first apparition in Japan in the Nara era, around the year 700. Rediscovered a few centries later, this bamboo flute became, with its soft and captivating tone, the prerogative of a traveling monk sect, the Komuso. Being a meditation instrument, its sound was meant to express the strength of the breath, and its melodies to explore the almost infinite timbres and sound colors of the instrument.

Thus, the player often only needs a single tone, which he modulates and ornaments in thousand ways, which he approaches and from which he moves away using the noise of the breath as well as the pure sound, of stable as well as glissandi tones, or abrupt changes. Some of these expression means used for several centuries are thus very close to the most avant-gardist techniques in Europe!!

Dieter Zuishô Nanz, flutist and musicologist, has given Shakuhachi concerts in Switzerland and Japan. He decided studying Shakuhachi in Japan with Kakiuchi Sanpô and Tajima Tadashi. The later, iemoto (founder) of Jikishô-Ryû and known worldwide as a major living ambassador of his art, gave him the title of Shihan (master) and invited Dieter Nanz to teach Shakuhachi in Europe.