ISSUE Project Room presents renowned composer, instrument builder, and Fluxus artist Yoshi Wada, who reprises performances of his early 1970s work “Earth Horns with Electronic Drone” on two evenings at the Emily Harvey Foundation. Wada performs on four original “pipe horn” instruments with a group of local New York players including Dan Peck, Joe Moffett, and Sam Kulik, and is accompanied on organ and electronics by his son, composer Tashi Wada.
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Yoshi Wada is a composer and artist associated with the downtown New York, experimental arts scene of the last fifty years. Wada was born in 1943 in Kyoto, Japan. He studied sculpture at the Kyoto University of Fine Arts, and then moved to New York in the late 1960s. Wada joined the Fluxus movement in 1968 after meeting its founder George Maciunas. In the early 1970s, Wada began building homemade musical instruments and writing compositions for them based on his personal research in timbre, resonance, and improvisation with the overtone series. He studied music composition with La Monte Young, North Indian singing with Pandit Pran Nath, and Scottish bagpipe with James McIntosh and Nancy Crutcher. Wada’s performances and sound installations offer audiences the opportunity to consider what we hear, the way we hear it, and what hearing means. Wada has presented his work at The Kitchen, New York; New Music in America, New York; Whitney Biennial, New York; Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; Emily Harvey Gallery, New York; Biennale of Sydney, Australia; Festival d’Automne, Paris; PS1, New York; Venice Biennale; and AV Festival, Newcastle, UK. His recorded works are published by Japanese record labels EM Records and Omega Point.
Tashi Wada grew up in New York and lives in Los Angeles. His practice is informed by experimental music and art—particularly the work of artists affiliated with Fluxus, including his father Yoshi Wada—and interdisciplinary performance. Wada's compositions use apparently simple structures and carefully calibrated tuning systems to generate rich and unanticipated perceptual effects. He presents his music often in collaboration with other artists including Charles Curtis and Stephan Mathieu, in addition to performing regularly with his father.
