Let’s enjoy live koto music and learn about Japanese music culture!
箏の生演奏を楽しみましょう！日本の音楽について学びましょう！
Please email to kozue.matsumoto@pomona.edu for the Zoom passcode!
In this event, you can watch the live performances of koto (Japanese harp) and shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute). You can also learn a little about these instruments and the music and culture around them.
Kozue Matsumoto, a Japanese language assistant at the Oldenborg Center plays a koto. Also, Rachel Rudich, a instrumental faculty at Pomona College joins us as a guest artist to share her shakuhachi music with us!
About Kozue Matsumoto 松元香壽恵:
Born and raised in the Tohoku (東北) area in Japan and having lived in Tokyo as well, Kozue is now based in the Los Angeles area. She has played the koto since she was three years old under Ikuta-ryu (生田流) Miyagi-kai (宮城会) and holds a semi-master title (準師範). She has also played the shamisen and the shinobue since she was small.
Recently, she has contributed her koto sounds to 2020 Tokyo Olympics (postponed) as well as Ghost of Tsushima, a PS4 game released in 2020.
Other than these recent achievements, she has been collaborating with various musicians and movement, visual, installation, and other artists. Not only does she play traditional, contemporary, and experimental music, but she also improvises, composes, and creates mixed media arts.
Together with her creative works and inter-disciplinary collaborations with various artists, she has a strong interest in exploring the possibilities of bringing Japanese traditional sounds and performing arts beyond their conventional contexts.
She has performed at various projects and performances including MicroFest (Los Angeles CA), Lucas Artists Residency at Montalvo Arts Center (Saratoga, CA), Center for World Music (San Diego, CA), Desert X (Coachella Valley, CA), SASSAS (Los Angeles, CA), Improvisation Summit of Portland (Portland, OR), Time-Based Art Festival (Portland, OR), Washington Street Art Center (Boston, MA), The Fuse Factory Electronic and Digital Arts Lab (Columbus, OH), Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (Vancouver, Canada), and Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble (Vancouver, Canada).
While being a Japanese music ensemble instructor at California Institute of the Arts, she has been invited by universities, colleges, and ensembles throughout the USA for lectures, master classes and workshops both in person and online. She studied improvisation, composition, and music technology with Susan Allen, Vinny Golia, Eyvind Kang, and Ajay Kapur, and graduated with the Performer-Composer MFA from California Institute of the Arts.
About Rachel Rudich:
Rachel Rudich is an internationally known flutist specializing in contemporary music, repertoire for flute and electronics, flutist as dancer, and traditional and improvised music for shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute. She has premiered hundreds of new works and has performed extensively throughout the world as a soloist. Ms. Rudich has received numerous recording grants and can be heard on over 25 CDs on 15 labels. She received her DMA from the Manhattan School of Music, and her MA degree in Dance from University of California and is currently Professor of Flute at California Institute of the Arts, and Lecturer at Pomona College.
As a student of the shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute, Ms. Rudich has worked with Masakazu Yoshizawa (Los Angeles), Bill Shozan Schultz (Los Angeles), Kaoru Kakizakai (Tokyo), Christopher Yohemei Blasdel (Tokyo), Yodo Kurahashi (Kyoto), and Riley Lee (Australia). She attended and performed at the World Shakuhachi Festivals in Sydney, Australia in 2008, Kyoto in 2012, and London in 2018, as well as the Rockies Shakuhachi Camp in Boulder, Colorado in 2009 through 2011, 2013 and 2017. After a performance at REDCAT, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times said, “the extended contributions by Rachel Rudich on shakuhachi were at once inventive and atmospheric.” Ms. Rudich spent two months in Japan during the spring of 2012 for extensive study of and performances on the shakuhachi, and was most recently in Japan in 2018 for further research, study, and performing a solo concert in Tokyo of pieces for shakuhachi and electronics by American composers. Ms. Rudich leads a beginning shakuhachi class and the Japan Ensemble at CalArts and teaches private students in the Los Angeles area, and remotely around the world. More information can be found at www.rachelrudich.com.