Musician's Profile

 

Keiko Masuda (Flute&Japanse traditional flutes)

 

“Various color” performance bear out by her various styles of experience and particularly nowadays enjoys an career as a soloist and one of a member of chamber music. Including international orchestra project tour in Europe (2001-2),Japanese traditional music tour in Holland and Belgium(2003-4), since then performed a lot of solo concerts, recitals, the theme music on radio(2009-), playing on the cruise(2011-).Her playing never persist on classical style in spite of her education. It may be well-caused being raised by Japanese traditional dancer so it’s related she had long term collaboration with “Shinnai -samisen” as well as flamenco music. Specially deserved recital in 2011, she mixed her stage « classics, flamenco, contemporary and Japanese », nevertheless she’s still on the way profound all kind of Japanese Flutes.

 

Keiko began her flute studies in her hometown of Kagawa with Haruyo Sagara and Norio Iwasaki. Later, she went on to study with Chag-Cock Kim and Masami Nakagawa at Attached music high school of Tokyo University of the Arts as well as the University and Conservatoire of Amsterdam with Harrie Starreveld in 2003. Had the opportunity to perform with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble of Tokyo, Seto philharmony orchestra and Bach chamber music association as a substitute flutist/piccoloist. In addition to her modern flute studies, she also trained piccolo flute with Vincent Conrtvint, flute traverse with Martin Root vocal with Gary Walker, Ryuteki with Takeshi Sasamoto

 

In 2014 She had already live tour with a group of Japanese Koto and Jazz pianist, performance in Tokyo with Shamisen, other Koto player, classical ”duo increase” which arrange famous orchestra pieces for flute and piano, cooperated with flamenco, duo with jazz pianist and classical trio at particular live shows and so on. Two CD will release and recital with classical guitar is coming in this year.

 

 

Karin Aoki (Koto)

 

Born in Kagawa, started Koto playing at age of 10 by Michiko Takahata.

She studied Ikuta style at Seiha conservatory where she received BM, MM under Yasuko Nakajima, Sumiko Goto, Sumiko Hirai. The chief graduation of the 25th NHK traditional Japanese music upbringing society awarded a scholarship as trainee of the Agency for Cultural Affairs artist. She was also succeeded audition of NHK traditional Japanese music and held a recital "modern koto" in 2000, past the fifth Victor traditional Japanese music audition and then released solo album contained Japanese classical, “Gayou Aoki” in 2004. Recently besides her performances, she gives high priority to teenager's education.

 

Moreover co-starring with not only the Western musical instruments, she performed with Keiko Nosaka who deviced 20, 25 string Koto(2000), was dedicated Koto concerto “Concerto for 25 string Koto and chamber ensemble” (2003) and solo piece “At dusk in November” (2013) by Akira Ooyama sponsored by Kagawa prefecture. Upcoming concert in 2014, “The universe of Akira Ifukube who composed Godzilla theme song, 100 year anniversary.

 

 

Kazuhiro Tanabe (Contra Bass)

 

Kazuhiro began his Doublebass study with Akitoshi Watanabe, Yoshio Nagashima and Zolt.A.Tibay at Attached music high school of Tokyo University of the Arts as well as the University. Other than activity in the classical music, playing with many various artists of genres and recordings. Above all, he’s remarkable and prominent tango speciallist, playing recently with Naoki Kita quartet and Kyotani quartet at international music festival in Miyazaki every year and also Argentine artists such as Osvaldo Berlingieri, Victor Lavallen, José Colángelo, Hugo Pagano. He participates many base ensemble as well. In 2003 Base ensemble “GEN311” had been invited to ISB International Base Festival in USA and successfully garnered great reputation. And another base ensemble with Toru Saito thereafter inspiredly he started to show interests of improvisation in musical performance. Duo and trio with kaZZma(singer), Kazuhiro plays tango and the folklore besides groping new music beyond the genre with Koda Hisafumi(clarinetist).

 

 

Naomi Sato (Sho&Saxophones)

 

She graduated from the saxophone class of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1998. She finished 2nd phase saxophone studying at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam in 2002.

She also studied improvisation and composition at Conservatorium van Amsterdam.

 

 

Naomi is the Semi Finalist of the 2nd International Adolphe Sax Concours in Dinant(1998), and the 3rd prize winner of Saxophonewettbewerb Gustav Bunke in Hannover(1999). She studied the saxophone with Nobuya Sugawa(Tokyo), Arno Bornkamp(Amsterdam) and Claude Delangle(Paris).

She had played with Philharmonic Orchestra of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music(Tokyo, Japan), Orcketre de l’Academie europeenne de musique with Pierre Boulez (Aix-en Provence, Fronce), Ensemble Lucilin (Luxembourg), het Residentie Orkest(The Hague, Netherlands), het Ives Ensemble(Zaandam,Netherlands), Axyz Ensemble(Amsterdam, Netherlands) and Ensemble Labyrint(Amersfoort, Netherlands).

 

 

She studied the Sho(Japanese traditional mouth organ) with Ko Ishikawa at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. She is collaborated with many composers and played with Ives Ensemble, Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, Netherlands Vocaal Laboratorium, Nieuw Ensemble, Dansgroep Kriszitna de Chatel(Netherlands), Fontana Mix Ensemble (Italy), East-West Festival Ensemble (Germany), New Music Network Philadelphia, N-JP project(U.S.).

She is the sho player in Atlas Ensemble(Amsterdam, Netherlands) and giving workshops in Atlas Academy.

 

 

As a composer, she composed pieces for Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, Arte Duo, Erik Bosgraaf & Izar Elias and for different projects such as Oerol Festival(Netherlands), Festival de Chaillol(France), Bach Festival in Dordrecht(Netherlands) , JAPAnostalgie(Japan) and so on. Pieces for Arte Duo and JAPAnostalgie was supported by Fonds Podium Kunsten in the Netherlands.

 

She studied composition with Wim Henderickx at the Consemvatorium van Amsterdam. Her compositions were played in Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Finland, America and Japan.   

 

 

Christiaan Saris (Percussion)

 

After graduating Cum Laude for both his Bachelor and Master degree in classical percussion (ArtEZ conservatory Zwolle and the Hochschüle für Musik Detmold) Chris operates as a percussionist, sound-designer, improvisor, teacher and performer. He works together with many prominent (inter)national orchestras, ensembles, dance- and theatre-groups, conductors, choreographers and composers. One of the most beautiful and most important experiences -with great impact on his profession -was the possibility to work together with composer Mauricio Kagel.

 

Being educated in a wide range of percussion instruments Chris is currently focusing on live-electronics and improvisation. He is co-founder of duo Pochan that consists of a combination of hand-percussion and Japanese Sho (mouth-organ).  In addition to his freelance-activities as percussionist Chris is giving workshops in schools and through organizations such as Papageno (special-need education) and Musicians Without Borders (children in war zones).