Tokyo, 18.11.2011 - 19.11.2011
On 18 and 19 November, Tokyo hosted an unprecedented musical event. Poland New Music Festival featured top young Polish musicians playing jazz, avant-garde and improvised music, as well as leading like-minded Japanese artists. The Tokyo audience was thrilled.
The venue for the concert was Pit Inn, the Tokyo base for such legends as John Zorn, Bill Laswell, or Otomo Yoshihide. The project's curator is one of the unquestionable leaders in guitar improvisation - Kazuhisa Uchihashi. The Polish artists who took part in the project included Artur Majewski, Gerard Lebik, Jacek Kochan, Macio Moretti, Piotr Zabrodzki, Patryk Zakrocki, Paweł Szamburski, Michal Gorczynski and Bartek Tycinski. Japan was represented by Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Tatsuya Yoshida, Koichi Makigami and Akira Sotoyama.
The first day was filled with short, ca half-hour-long presentations of the ensembles and projects of Polish musicians. The first set, which featured duos only, started with a performance by Sza Za (Paweł Szamburski and Patryk Zakrocki), who enchanted the audience with an imaginative sound, somewhere on the verge of illustrative music, micro-chamber music and electroacoustic sound experiments. Their performance was followed by a well-known duet of experienced improvisers Jacek Kochan and Kazuhisa Uchihashi, and the somewhat unpredictable LXMP duo comprising Macio Moretti and Piotr Zabrodzki, who performed this time as a traditional rhythm section, showing some raging rock energy in the spirit of the legendary Japanese Tatsuya Yoshida's duo Ruins. The second set was opened by a calm, improvised performance by Trio 146, comprising Patryk Zakrocki, Michał Gorczynski and Kazuhisa Uchihashi, playing violin, clarinet, electric guitar and daxophone. Then came the time for the great Wroclaw-based Mikrokolektyw, with a guest performance by the percussionist Nori Tanaka. At the end of the show, the musicians were joined on stage by the saxophonist Gerad Lebik, which allowed a smooth transition from Mikrokolektyw's performance to the concert of the Lebik / Tanaka duo.
The second day brought 10 several-minute-long performances of improvised ensembles. The musicians who performed during the previous day were joined by Tatsuya Yoshida, a legendary percussionist, Koichi Makigami, a dazzling vocal performer, and Akira Sotoyama, an exceptional percussionist, as well as the guitarist Bartek Tycinski. From this moment on, there were no rules on the stage but only an abundance of great spontaneous sounds, loads of energy and a great chemistry between the musicians who performed together for the first time. There was also a lot of disarming sense of humour. Gradually, the abstract sounds were accompanied by more and more elements of performance art. The madness that took over the stage infected the audience, too. The club, which was filled to the brim, seemed to perfectly resonate with the music and at times the audience joined the game. The evening, which was full of surprises, ended with a joint performance of all the artists. One by one, everyone returned the stage to play a beautiful calming coda.
The two-day festival of new music from Poland, which was the first such event in Japan, was possible thanks to the cooperation with Kazuhisa Uchihashi, who has been musically related to Poland for 10 years now. Kazuhisa Uchihashi became the project curator and selected the performers, basing on his earlier visits and the musical workshop conducted in Warsaw and Wroclaw. The festival audience included some of the most recognized names in Japanese jazz and avant-garde music - Kazutoki Umezu, Michiyo Yagi and Tetsuo Furudate, who praised the performance of the Polish artists. Thus, Poland New Music Festival may seem a wicked and well-thought-out response to the Japanese New Music Festival prepared by Tatsuya Yoshida, who visited Poland for the first time 8 years ago.
Date: 18-19th of November, 2011
Venue: Pitt Inn, 2-12-4 Accord Bldg B1, Shinjuku shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
Organizers: Adam Mickiewicz Institute
See also:
The event was organised as part of I, CULTURE - the International Cultural Programme of the Polish EU Presidency co-ordinated by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. For more information on the Programme, see: culture.pl.