Traditional Japanese music at Jyväskylä City Theatre

Two traditional music groups from Japan will perform on 30th of September at Jyväskylä City Theatre. New Sapporo traditional music group GUN and Hokkaido traditional song group Esashi-Oiwake-Kai will start their concert at 7pm. The concert will honour the 90th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and Finland. Alongside Japanese traditional music, there will be a chance to see Shuho Sasaki’s Ikebana art.

The first part of the concert, entitled Koto, traditional music from Japan, will contain the performance of the New Sapporo traditional music group GUN. Their performance programme consists mainly of old Japanese traditional music, but also some modern traditional music. GUN will be playing traditional Japanese instruments in their part of the concert, for example harps (Koto and Shamisen) and bamboo flutes (Shakuhachi).

Following GUN, the traditional song group Esashi-Oiwake-Kai will perform Japanese folksongs from Hokkaido, as the second part of the concert is entitled, and their performance programme contains traditional work and dance songs from Hokkaido. As mentioned about the GUN’s instruments, Esashi-Oiwake-Kai will be using mainly the same, but in addition, Gongs (traditional percussions).

Ikebana art, Ikebana being “the art of flower-arranging”, by Shuho Sasaki will give extra value to the concert, in addition to the music of course. The origin of Ikebana dates back to the 6th-century when the Buddhist priests and monks began to arrange flowers for sacrificial purposes. Shuho Sasaki’s Ikebana art represents the Sogetsu-school of Ikebana art, which was founded in the 1920’s and its motto is “everyone can make Ikebana, out of everything, everywhere”.

The concert in Jyväskylä, is only one of a three-part concert series, and the other venues are in Helsinki (29th of September) and Asikkala (1st of October). The organizers of the Jyväskylä concert are The Finnish Japanese Society, City of Jyväskylä and Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä.

For more information, visit:
http://www.jyvaskylasinfonia.fi/
http://www.suomi-japani.net/Kansanmusiikki.pdf (programme in Finnish)

Tickets:
www.lippupiste.fi