Jan 25 Kaoru Watanabe + Sameer Gupta’s Nature/War/Love at Rubin Museum

My first show in New York of 2019 is coming up January 25th at the Rubin Museum. I will be working with a tabla player/percussionist Sameer Gupta and kathak dancer Parul Shah. As usual I’ll be playing various Japanese percussion instruments and flutes. For this performance, we are drawing from Indian and Japanese folklore, mythologies and poetry to deal with universal themes of the human condition, death and destruction, love and war. 
 
One example of a story that we explored was that of Shizuka Gozen- a tragic historical figure, caught up in the horrors of a civil war between two powerful brothers, Yoritomo and Yoshitsune, in the Kamakura period. We broke down the character of her name Shizuka to represent different parts of the concert: 青 (blue) to represent NATURE. 争 for WAR and combined them into 静 (quiet) to represent LOVE. This information feeds what we have created very directly in an abstract way. The music will also draw from modern history- my composition for prepared koto ZERO, is about the Zero fighter, the Japanese fighter jet used in WWII, a symbol of both Japan's engineering and design brilliance as well as the resulting death and destruction.

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Tickets: $30.00
Museum member Receive a Discount
Click here for more information
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Sincerely,
Kaoru