AIRMW artists and previous collaborators Kioto Aoki and Haruhi Kobayashi present an evening of taiko and electronics. The duo each performs solo programs, followed by a collaborative set that abstracts, overlaps, and expands the structures of electronic and acoustic drone.
$15 / $10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Haruhi Kobayashi
Kioto Aoki
Haruhi Kobayashi is a Chicago-based sound artist and vocal performer. Originally from Tokyo, Haruhi began her career as a Japanese-pop singer-songwriter, releasing solo albums and composing for TV and film. Throughout her formative years in the Japanese pop industry, she became interested in the underlying social and emotional connotations and conditions of her own voice and the inextricable ties between one’s voice and their identity. She started to manipulate her voice into unidentifiable sounds, liberating it from its “human” constraints. She is currently the High Concept Labs AIR resident 2024.
Kioto Aoki is a Chicago-based artist, educator and musician whose playing is informed by the Japanese aesthetics of ma and emphasizes the melodic phrasing of space and choreography to reorient the notion of percussion as mere rhythm. Her stoic, durational explorations elicit soundscapes that straddle the organic textures of live performance and sonic nuances of cyclical, droning sustain. Aoki maintains a balance of retaining the artistic and aesthetic integrity of traditional Japanese music with a contemporary sensibility that extends beyond the measures of cultural preservation bringing taiko to the contemporary artistic ecologies of music, sound and performance. Aoki is the 5th generation of the Toyoakimoto house, an okiya (geisha house) performing arts family from Tokyo with roots dating back to the Edo period. Standing on the professional stage from the age of 7, and studying under father Tatsu Aoki (Toyoaki Sanjuro), she continues the family legacy as musician on taiko and tsuzumi, using her stage name Toyoaki Chitose (豊秋千東勢) when on shamisen. Working within traditional and experimental contexts as a second generation Japanese American, Aoki sustains this traditional music lineage traversing geographical and cultural boundaries.
Musical projects include solo albums released by Asian Improv Records and FPE Records, Yoko Ono’s SKYLANDING, Tatsu Aoki’s The MIYUMI Project, Experimental Sound Studio’s Sonic Pavilion Festival, and the Soundtrack series at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago."