Kodo Taiko Drummers
Kodo Taiko Drummers 13 minute video: Get your heat beating with the drums of Kodo, Japan's premiere taiko group. Welcome in the New Year with their pure energy…
Read moreJetavana Vihara, for Biwa and Voice
Jetavana Vihara, for Biwa and Voice 3-minute video: This piece for the Japanese biwa, entitled Jetavana Vihara, comes from the classic Tale of the Heike (Heike Monogatari.) The…
Read moreKazushi Matana
Kazushi Matana Performs Koku Koku, a 13th century meditative solo piece for Shakuhachi. Koku, or Empty Sky in Japanese, is a solo piece for shakuhachi flute, composed in…
Read moreThe Sound of Breath Through Bamboo
The Sound of Breath Through Bamboo by Elliot Kallen When Mahatma Gandhi first heard the sound of the shakuhachi, he supposedly wept and said he had finally…
Read moreTsugaru Shamisen
4-minute video performance of a traditional, dynamic folk style of shamisen playing, that sounds surprisingly modern.
Read moreFolk Music Rocks
7-minute music video: AUN J Classic Orchestra “Music has nationalities, but does not have borders.” It was this notion that started Kohei Inoue’s journey to explore the potential of Japanese…
Read moreListen to Shakuhachi
6 minutes: Tsuru no Sugomori (Nesting of Cranes) is performed by Kohachiro MIYATA on the shakuhachi bamboo flute. This programmatic piece describes the life of the crane, a bird with…
Read moreToru Takemitsu Guitar
The late Japanese contemporary music composer Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) created several hundred works and provided scoring for almost one hundred films. The mostly self-taught Takemitsu is known for his unique sound that was …
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