World Music Encounters:
Soundscapes of Japan with ZENYŌJI Keisuke and KANEKO Sumie
Sunday, April 27, 5-7 p.m., Historic Church
The Live Music Capital has rarely heard live music like this.
On April 27, World Music Encounters at St. David’s will host two of the world’s most acclaimed Japanese musicians—one traditional, one contemporary—in our 175-year-old gothic sanctuary. We will feature ZENYŌJI Keisuke, a master shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) player from Tokyo performing traditional repertoire on this hauntingly beautiful instrument. He will be followed in the second set by KANEKO Sumie, an innovative New York-based vocalist and composer on the koto (13-string zither) and shamisen (3-stringed plucked lute). Sumie will be accompanied by Austin-based jazz heavyweights, pianist Rique Pantoja and bassist John Fremgen.
We are the beneficiaries of a stroke of extraordinary luck. As it happens, Japanese music scholar Dr. Marty Regan is producing the World Shakuhachi Festival this month in College Station (where he is a professor at Texas A&M University). Marty was looking for a great venue with a loyal audience and he learned about St. David’s popular world music series. Marty will be featuring dozens of the world’s best shakuhachi players at his festival and he is generously sharing two of the best with St. David’s.
World Music Encounters has been featuring, since its launch in September 2023, the music of foreign-born artists primarily from Austin. We have mainly booked musicians from the southern hemisphere, such as West Africa, South America, and Mexico. Frankly, we could never have afforded to bring musicians of this caliber from Tokyo and New York to Austin.
Zenyoji—a national musical treasure in Japan—has never been to the United States before. This will be the U.S., Texas, and Austin premiere of his interpretation of this thousand-year-old music, which was originally created by Buddhist monks—“priests of nothingness”—in the practice of blowing meditation. For them, music had an entirely different purpose than entertainment. For most of our Austin audience, the dreamlike and meditative sound of the shakuhachi will be an entirely new experience. Zenyoji won the prestigious Grand Excellence Award of the Arts Festival of the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2017.
Sumie is a giant in her own right. This New York-based Japanese artist pioneered the use of traditional instruments in jazz and experimental music. She has collaborated with Pulitzer-prize winner Paula Vogel and Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project. She has performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Blue Note in NYC, and at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
The April 27 concert will conclude the second season of the acclaimed World Music Encounters series, a non-profit endeavor that is a musical gift of St. David’s to the community. It is produced by former NPR national correspondent and St David’s parishioner John Burnett.
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