Okuda Atsuya

My primary shakuhachi master is, of course, Okuda Atsuya, an amazingly skilled ji-nashi shakuhachi player and teacher.
After twenty years as a jazz trumpeter, Okuda turned to the ji-nashi shakuhachi and since 1985 has confined himself to playing and teaching to the honkyoku repertoire, in which he also improvises. He also improvises in that idiom. Okuda’s teaching is based on ‘old-fashioned’ Japanese concepts, in which the pupil is expected to imitate the teacher’s playing. That, however, is not the whole story: whenever I studied a honkyoku piece with Okuda, we would go through it phrase by phrase, with him explaining the new techniques involved. Then, in order to get the shape of the piece, we would play it through together what seemed an unlimited number of times. Each time, Okuda played the piece slightly differently. In the beginning I found this frustrating – just when I thought I had it right, Okuda would come with a surprise! After a while I simply accepted this as part of Okuda’s pedagogic method and just tried to play along as best I could. Much later I realised that this was the most efficient way to learn the true sprit of honkyoku and the instrument itself, and thus it enabled me to improvise on it. I have read music since the age of 3, longer, that is, than I have been able to read words. I had always found it difficult to improvise on the piano or flute, but now I suddenly found myself able to improvise in the honkyoku idiom on the ji-nashi shakuhachi! This, I think, was the result of Okuda’s teaching methods.

Okuda has specialised in playing long ji-nashi shakuhachi, up to 3 shaku 4 sun in length (over 1 meter), and plays solo honkyoku (the repertoire of the komusô, the mendicant monks of Zen Buddhism during the Edo period (1603-1867) and also improvisation. He has performed widely throughout Japan as well as in Europe, the US and Canada.
www.zensabo.com/

Clive Bell was the first person I approached in order to learn non-idiomatic improvisation. Bell has played the shakuhachi for many years and has found a unique voice – something I find very important, but which, however, is quite rare in the case of the shakuhachi players, perhaps due to the heavy cultural baggage accompanying the instrument. Studying improvisation with Bell was wonderfully liberating! He was very patient and gave me many tips and most of all confidence in my own abilities. We still occasionally play improvised shakuhachi duos.

Bell studied the shakuhachi in Tokyo, and the khene (Lao mouth organ) in Laos and Thailand.
In 2005 he took part in the British Council Beijing project, Sound & The City, alongside Brian Eno, David Toop and Peter Cusack.
Recently he has worked with Jah Wobble, Karl Jenkins, Complicite Theatre (The Elephant Vanishes and Measure For Measure), the BBC Singers (Spitalfields Festival in June 2004), and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Prom, August 04).
He has played on Jah Wobble’s last 18 albums, plus records by Frank Chickens, Paul Schutze, Jeff Beck, Bill Laswell, Karl Jenkins and Philip Clemo.
He has composed music for theatre shows by Complicite, Kazuko Hohki, the Whalley Range All Stars and IOU Theatre, and for radio plays by Louise Oliver, Kazuko Hohki and Pomme Clayton.Clive Bell’s solo shakuhachi CD is on the ARC label, and was reissued in 2005. Three recent duo albums are Sleep It Off (with Mike Adcock), The Geographers (with Sylvia Hallett) and Mystery Lights (with David Ross).
He writes for The Wire magazine.
www.clivebell.co.uk

I began studying with Jon Raskin in my second semester at Mills College. Jon is a wonderful teacher and a very accomplished musician with a great critical mind. I could show up for lessons with any music I found and he would always be able to help me to discover an approach to the piece. Had it not been for Jon’s skills as a teacher and musician and his patience, I would probably not have been able to play Frank Denyer’s The Tender Sadness of Tyrants as They Dance for bass flute and shakuhachi. We practiced it together almost every week for a whole year.

Jon Raskin play baritone, alto, and sopranino saxophones, jew's harp and saw. He is a founding member of the ROVA Saxophone Quartet. He participated in new music ensembles directed by John Adams (San Francisco Conservatory of Music) and Dr. Barney Childs (University of Redlands), and served as music director of the Tumbleweed Dance Company (1974-77), was a founding member of the Blue Dolphin Alternative Music Space and participated in the creation of the Farm- an art project that included a city farm, a community garden, Ecology Center, Dance and Theater companies and organized the creation of a city park.
ROVA has worked with John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Terry Riley, Fred Frith, Alvin Curran, Sam Rivers, SF Taiko Dojo, John Carter and many others, released over 20 recordings, and toured extensively in Europe the US and Japan. Raskin's numerous grants and commissions include: Composition grants from Chamber Music of America (2002) and Meet the Composer (2000), Berkeley Symphony commission (1995), Reader's Digest/Meet the Composer (1991), Gerbode Interdisciplinary grant for "Occupancy" with Howard Martin (1990), NEA composer grant for Poison Hotel, a theatre production by Soon 3 (1988).
www.jonraskin.com/
www.rova.org/

Joëlle Léandre came to teach improvisation workshop and composition at Mills College during my third semester there. Her comments were always useful, and she was not afraid to give a personal opinion. She was one of the most inspiring teachers I have worked with both in our one-to-one composition lessons and the workshop. She is a great source of inspiration as a musician, performer, person and woman.

Joëlle Léandre is a contrabass player originally from Aix-en-Provence, now living in Paris, France. She graduated from the conservatory in Paris with excellence, never settled in an orchestra, but kept herself busy as a freelance musician both playing compositions and improvising and composing herself. She has played with Itinéraire, 2E2M and Pierre Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain. Léandre has also worked with Merce Cunningham and with John Cage, who has composed especially for her - as have Scelsi, Fénelon, Jolas and Clémenti. Léandre has worked in jazz and improvisation with such players as Derek Beley, Anthony Braxton, Georges Lewis, Evan Parker, Irène Schweizer, Steve Lacy, Fred Frith and John Zorn. She has written extensively for dance and theatre, and has staged a number of multidisciplinary performances. She is tirelessly performs throughout the world and is rarely to be found in her home in Paris.
www.actuellecd.com/bio.f/leandre_jo.html

Anne LeBaron taught composition at Mills College in my fourth semester. She helped me develop some of my compositions. Experimenting one day during a lesson, we formed awonderful trio we later called Silk, Bamboo and Catgut, with Anne on harp, Kanoko Nishi on koto and myself on shakuhachi - and we played together during our lessons for the rest of the semester.

LeBaron is an internationally noted composer. She is widely recognized for her work in the instrumental, electronic, and performance realms. Her compositions embrace an extraordinary array of subjects, ranging from contemporary adaptations of Greek, South American, and Caribbean myths, to environmental issues addressing such diverse topics as species extinction and the sonic nature of blowholes, to the legendary Pope Joan. As a Fulbright Scholar in Germany in 1980 - 81, LeBaron studied with György Ligeti, later completing her doctorate in composition at Columbia University.  Her works have been written for virtually every contemporary genre and performed and broadcast throughout the U.S. and elsewhere. Awards and prizes include a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Fromm Foundation Commission, and the CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts. An accomplished harpist, LeBaron is renowned for her pioneering work in developing extended techniques and electronic enhancements for the harp. She presently teaches composition and related subjects at the California Institute of the Arts, and has been teaching at Mills College as the Visiting Darius Milhaud Professor for the Spring of 2005. Her new opera, WET, with a libretto by Terese Svoboda premiered at RedCat in downtown Los Angeles in 2005.
www.annelebaron.com/

Here I must also mention my very good friend, Sofie Guillois Larsen. We studied music together as teenagers. She graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen and the Conservatoire National de Bobigny on harp. Sofie is an immense inspiration to me, both as a musician and as a human being and friend. She is not only wonderfully proficient, but also a very creative harp player - indeed very courageous and true to her art. Her fantastic band Harpcore is something else! See www.harpcore.com

Having studied music since the age of three I have, of course, had the privilege of studying with many more teachers than the six mentioned above. The persons mentioned above are teachers I have either studied for long periods of time and/or who have influenced me greatly in my music.

Alas, I cannot remember the name of my first piano teacher, but later on I studied for a long time with a hr. Mejling, who made me laugh so much. My main flute teachers were Julanta Jacobson and Inge Fog. As for the shakuhachi, I have had brief encounters with Nakamura Akikazu (I wanted to learn to circle breathe), Richard Stagg, Michael Coxall (who taught me to appreciate sankyoku).