Apart from honkyoku being the foundation of my shakuhachi playing and a deepfelt love, I also specialise in non-idiomatic free improvisation and playing new music on jinashi shakuhachi.

During my BA studies in ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London – I began feeling that honkyoku alone could not represent me as a complex person with a multi racial and cultural background. I needed to take my jinashi shakuhachi playing up to present day mixing with what could be described as my Western music background – as well as the present in the here and now through improvisation. I therefore went to study performance of new music and improvisation at Mills College, Oakland California, USA.

I have since then performed with Fred Firth, Joëlle Léandre, Anne LeBaron, Mats Gufstafsson,  Thurston Moore, Makiko Hirabayashi, Ikui Mori, Sylvie Courvoisier, Carla Kihlstedt, Wu Fei, Yumi Hara, Hyelim Kim and many more.

I furthermore enjoy collaborating with composers as they can hear the shakuhachi in different ways than I – as a performer who has carved wide motorways in my brain with my repetitive movements. Good composers can see new possibilities in the shakuhachi, which I enjoy very much.