BRATTLEBORO — On Saturday, April 25, at 7 p.m., Latchis Arts will present a special concert, Music Across Borders: Sounds of Japan, as part of its expanding number of live performances in the main theater at The Latchis, 50 Main St.
The program features two of the foremost performers of Japanese music, Yoko Hiraoka playing the string instruments koto and shamisen, and Ralph Samuelson on the shakuhachi bamboo flute. It represents a rare opportunity to hear the sounds of these stunningly beautiful instruments in Vermont as played by these internationally recognized performers.
Proceeds from the concert benefit Latchis Arts and its work to preserve the Latchis Memorial Building and promote and host cultural activities.
Yoko Hiraoka, a performer of koto (a 13-string zither) and shamisen (a 3-string plucked lute), is a native of Kyoto, Japan, and has studied classical and modern Japanese music from an early age. Her performance career originated in Japan and spans more than 30 years.
Since moving to the United States in 1993, she has performed extensively at festivals, concerts, lecture-recitals and on television, radio, and studio recordings. Hiraoka has been the beneficiary of funding and support from the Consulate General of Japan and has undertaken residencies at Duke University, Texas A & M, and elsewhere.
She taught world music ensemble at the University of Colorado and has been teaching at Naropa University in Boulder since 1995.
Ralph Samuelson is a performer and teacher of the 5-hole Japanese bamboo flute, shakuhachi. He was trained in the classical tradition of the Kinko School of shakuhachi by the late Goro Yamaguchi (whose recording of the traditional piece “Crane's Nest” was included on the 160 track Golden Record that was launched into space on a Voyager mission in 1977 and was intended for extraterrestrial life forms.)
Samuelson has performed both traditional and contemporary music throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe. He has recorded for CBS Masterworks along with many other labels. He was the shakuhachi soloist in the New York City Ballet production of Jerome Robbins' Watermill and his Flutes of Hope ensemble commemorating the victims of the earthquake/tsunami in Japan that was presented at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York in 2012 and 2014, and at Carnegie Hall in 2013.
He is a visiting lecturer/artist and international advisor for the Seoul Institute of the Arts in Korea and is senior advisor and former director of the Asian Cultural Council in New York.
The shakuhachi, koto, and shamisen are three of Japan's most well-known musical instruments, representative of the Edo Period (1603-1867), a golden age of culture when music and the arts flourished. The chamber music descending from that era, often set to sung poetry, is today being studied and performed around the globe.
The April 25 concert not only brings the sounds of Japanese music to Vermont, but also highlights a unique moment in the history of music - these are musical instruments that are no longer associated only with a particular time and place, but have evolved to become part of the contemporary international musical landscape.
This concert will feature solo and duo pieces from the classical repertoire, modern compositions, and a new work written especially for Yoko Hiraoka and Ralph Samuelson by noted New York composer Elizabeth Brown.