The highlight of the festival is the legendary, award-winning, cross-genre composer, musician and producer, Otomo Yoshihide from Japan. Mr. Otomo will perform a solo set on the opening night on Friday, 29th November; and play in an ensemble with younger musicians on Sunday, 1st December. Mr. Otomo will also give an artist’s talk and conduct a master workshop on music improvisation on Thursday, 28th November. The talk + workshop event is FREE for students with a valid student ID!
*Workshop Participants:
Please bring your acoustic instruments to the workshop. You can use your voice, too! Unfortunately, we can’t accommodate electronic instruments and anything that needs to be plugged into the PA system. Seats are limited. Please register here: bit.ly/4fbkTSV
Otomo Yoshihide
Otomo Yoshihide moves between free jazz, noise, improvisation, composition and the unclassifiable with a generosity that opens up the possibilities for expression in all of the constellations with which he’s involved. He spent his teenage years in Fukushima, about 300 kilometers north of Tokyo. Influenced by his father, an engineer, Otomo began making electrical devices such as a radio and an electronic oscillator. In junior high school, his hobby was making sound collages using open-reel tape recorders. This was his first experience creating music. Soon after entering high school he formed a band that played rock and jazz, with Otomo on guitar. It wasn’t long, however, before he became a free jazz aficionado, listening to artists like Ornette Coleman, Erick Dolphy and Derek Bailey; and hearing music, both on disk and at concerts, by Japanese free jazz artists. Especially influenced by alto sax player Kaoru Abe and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, Otomo decided to play free jazz. In 1990, Otomo started what was to become Ground Zero. Until it disbanded in March 1998, the band was at the core of his musical creativity, while it underwent several changes in style and membership. Since Ground Zero, Otomo has embraced minimal improvisation, film music and the jazz/big band conceptions of his New Jazz Quartet/Quintet/Orchestra.