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 and enthusiasm....
Jetavana 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 narrative speaks about the impermanence of our physical world, as it is expressed in the ringing of the temple bell...
Kazushi 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 the 13th century as a personal form of...
The 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 heard the voice of the dead. This story epitomizes the ethereal quality that many people experience when they first hear the sound of the traditional Japanese bamboo flute, the shakuhachi. The inimitable sound and the primal nature of the shakuhachi appeal to our sense of the...
Tsugaru Shamisen
4-minute video performance of a traditional, dynamic folk style of shamisen playing, that sounds surprisingly modern.
Folk 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 musical instruments, and to transmit their sound to the world. Together with his twin brother, Kohei gives energetic performances on the Japanese drum, shamisen and shinobue flute under the stage name AUN. In 2009, Kohei started the AUN J...