Kasokeki Toki

After the Kasokeki Toki Europe Tour

This is the fifth year since we started this trio. Around last year, I began to feel a strong wish to find out for myself, by actually playing abroad, how our music would be received outside Japan. With the help of many people, we planned our first tour overseas, visiting three cities: Paris, Zürich and München.

On September 4 in Paris, we played in the cave of Espace Culturel Bertin Poirée (Association Culturelle Franco-Japonaise de Tenri), sharing the program with the duo of Maki Nakano (sax) and Karsten Hochapfel (cello), one set each. Their duo began with improvisation and flowed at the end into Satie’s Gnossienne. It was a strange and beautiful performance, as if creatures living in that underground space were telling us all kinds of stories. We too played while feeling the unique atmosphere and resonance of the room, and it was a good first night.

On September 6 in Zürich, with the support of Nik Bärtsch and Ronin Rhythm Productions, we played in his atelier. It was a very intimate space, and many musicians and people from the music world came. I think it was a deeply, deeply focused performance. Nik told us it was like an experience of diving deep into a “full emptiness.”

The next day, September 7, we were invited to the weekly Monday concert that Ronin holds at EXIL, the venue on the ground floor of the same building. This series alone has passed 1,100 performances. Again and again while listening, there were moments when I wondered what had just happened, as if watching magic. I was overwhelmed by the world created by the whole concert — the finely honed ensemble, together with the sound and lighting.

On the final day, September 8 in München, the concert was co-organized by Offene Ohren e.V., a non-profit that has long presented concerts of improvised music. The venue, Einstein Kultur, stands on the site of a former brewery, in a converted underground storage cellar. It is quite spacious, and its semicircular vaulted ceiling creates a distinctive resonance. We played two sets. More than forty people came, and they listened with real sincerity from beginning to end.

The tour was a very tight schedule with limited time and budget; our stay in München was less than twenty hours. I am grateful once again to Kanon Aonami and Fumi Endo for touring with me. When we started this group, I never imagined that the three of us would one day play together in Europe. I believe the many connections made on this tour will guide us onward again.

This tour was made possible by the support of many people.
Masayasu Hanai of Hanai Co., Ltd.; Maki Nakano; Masaaki Tsuruta of Association Culturelle Franco-Japonaise de Tenri; Ayumi Kagitani of KAGITANI art & music management; Ronin Rhythm Productions and Nik Bärtsch; Hannes Schneider of Offene Ohren e.V.; Laura Harzer of Einstein Kultur; and Arts Council Tokyo, which supported the tour with a grant — along with many others who gave us advice and help. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all.