Hiromichi Sakamoto

Friday, February 2nd at 8pm, ISSUE and AvanTokyo are pleased to present the solo US debut of Japanese cellist Hiromichi Sakamoto. The evening will also feature a duo presentation from musicians Kato Hideki & Zeena Parkins, which will take place at Brooklyn Music School in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Hiromichi Sakamoto is a force to contend with. Aside from his mastery of “traditional” cello techniques, Sakamoto is likely, at a moment’s notice, to turn his instrument upside down, sideways, and any way you could imagine (as well as some you couldn’t). He might scrape it with an electric grinder to produce an explosion of sparks, lay it on the floor and drop pencils on it, slap it, and generally do just about anything physically short of setting it on fire. Sometimes called “the cello shamanist,” Sakamoto’s performance will unfold with a mixture of original music and improvisation that he says will “transcend axes of space, time, and borders to evoke a sense of ‘nostalgia that all humans hold.” Tender themes will give way to a gruesome chaos as he pushes his instrument beyond its limits. Sakamoto’s continually evolving practice will see him expand on the vocabulary of the cello to produce a series of sounds–and sights–that one would be hard pressed to believe come from a cello. Sparks may even fly.

Coming to wider acclaim with his 1999 solo CD Zero-shiki, Hiromichi Sakamoto has devoted his practice to expanding the possibilities of the cello with an uncompromisingly experimental approach to the instrument. Meanwhile, Sakamoto’s diverse compositions for stage inform his theatrical approach to performances. He has composed scores for numerous stage, film, and underground contemporary dance performances, including a 20-year relationship with Taiwan’s innovative Assignment Theater. Sakamoto was also featured in the pioneering music documentary about Japan’s noise music scene, We Don’t Care About Music Anyway (directed by Cedric Dupil and Gaspard Quentz). The cellist is a member of acclaimed toy-pop orchestra Pascals, and, along with voice artist Koichi Makigami and bassist Kiyoto Fujiwara, a producer of the festival Jazz Art SENGAWA, a lynchpin for Japan’s avant-garde music community that takes place each fall on Tokyo’s outskirts.