This is one of a series of diaries I will be posting over the next week or so, introducing the artists who will be performing here in the People's Republic of Cambridge on the 24th of October. The occasion? International Climate Change Awareness Day. The concert?
It's called "Playing for the Planet."
Follow me below the flip to find out more about Elizabeth Reian Bennett and Ayakano Cathleen Read, to hear some exquisite music, and to get connected to a really exciting event.
But first, a word from our sponsor:
Please participate in an event on October 24. This is as important as it will ever get.
On Saturday, October 24, six different Boston-based performers of international music and dance will join together to draw attention to the global climate crisis. Featured artists include: Balkan and European music by members of the internationally acclaimed ensemble Libana; contemporary Indian classical dance with the Aparna Sindhoor Dance Theater; Japanese classical music for koto and shakuhachi with Ayakano Cathleen Read & Elizabeth Reian Bennett; Hindustani classical music with Warren Senders and The Raga Ensemble; middle-Eastern music with Beth Bahia Cohen, and traditional drumming and dance of Ghana with the Agbekor Drum and Dance Society. The music begins at 6:30 pm, at the First Congregational Church of Cambridge, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA. Tickets are $20; $15 students/seniors. All proceeds will go to the environmental organization www.350.org. For information, please go to the concert website.
Previous diaries in this series showcase the international women's ensemble Libana, and the exciting drumming of the Agbekor Drum and Dance Society.
There is a great bond of common sympathy among Westerners who have devoted their lives to the music of another culture. Making a life and a living performing a tradition that is not one's own by birth is a curious road with many twists and turns. Two good friends and professional colleagues who share this journey are Elizabeth Reian Bennett and Ayakano Cathleen Read, both specialists in the classical music of Japan. Bennett is a master of the end-blown bamboo flute called shakuhachi, while Read is an extraordinary virtuoso on the complex multi-stringed koto. Both women are among the very few non-Japanese artists to have achieved high professional status in the traditional guilds of Japanese classical music.
Wabi-sabi is...
...the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of what we think of as traditional Japanese beauty and it "occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West." Andrew Juniper claims, "if an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi." Richard R. Powell summarizes by saying "It (wabi-sabi) nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."
The words wabi and sabi do not translate easily. Wabi originally referred to the loneliness of living in nature, remote from society; sabi meant "chill", "lean" or "withered". Around the 14th century these meanings began to change, taking on more positive connotations. Wabi now connotes rustic simplicity, freshness or quietness, and can be applied to both natural and human-made objects, or understated elegance. It can also refer to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanence are evidenced in its patina and wear, or in any visible repairs.
Wiki
Ayakano Cathleen Read began studying Yamada School koto music in 1969. On Jan. 7, 1974 she became the first non-Japanese to join the shachu (musicians guild) of Nakanoshima Kin'ichi, and given the performing name Ayakano. Ms. Read has concertized widely in the United States, Japan and West Africa. She is adjunct professor in the Music Department of Tufts University. The koto is a traditional Japanese instrument with a long neck and rectangular sound box. It has thirteen strings and adjustable bridges to change the pitch of various strings.
Elizabeth Reian Bennett is the first woman to play professionally as a Grand Master of the shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute, and stands out as one of only a handful of western players trained in traditional Japanese music. She has studied and performed with Living National Treasure Aoki Reibo, recognized as Japan's foremost shakuhachi instrumentalist, for 30 years.
Elizabeth Reian Bennett
Ayakano Cathleen Read
Elizabeth Reian Bennett, performing "Honte Jyoshi (Song of the True Hand)"
Here is ethnomusicologist Jay Keister's description of this piece:
The first track, "Honte Jyoshi" ("Song of the True Hand"), is in itself an introduction to the instrument in that this short and simple piece is comprised mainly of long-held pitches with very subtle variations of tone color so characteristic of shakuhachi phrasing. As suggested by the word jyoshi, which literally means "tuning", this is a type of warm-up piece that covers the basics of shakuhachi playing, but is important for all players regardless of level. The inclusion of such a piece suggests Bennett’s belief in maintaining what is referred to as the "beginner’s mind" that prevails in Japanese Buddhist arts. The slow and steady ascent of long, drawn-out tones functions like a demonstration of the main pitches of the instrument, both open-holed and half-holed notes. After a brief climax of relatively busier phrases, the music returns tot long tones separated by the crucial element of silence or space (ma) common in Japanese music. Even in this display of the basics of shakuhachi, we can hear the full extent of Bennett’s impressive technique. In her decay of the last extended tones there is a delicate sense of fragility and even a feeling of "weakness" that is ultimately more powerful than "strong" tones. This effect is best described by the Japanese aesthetic term wabi, meaning a kind of warped or deliberately imperfect sound, and is something that only the most skilled and sensitive players can execute well.
"Asian Music, The Journal of the Society for Asian Music". Volume 39, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2008. By Jay Keister, University of Colorado at Boulder.
Bennett and Read were both enthusiastic in their agreement to participate in "Playing for the Planet." As custodians of an ancient lineage that continues to find present-day expression, they offer us a lesson in tradition and continuity, and in the disciplines of careful and attentive listening — all virtues that our troubled world sorely needs.
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Please participate in an event on October 24. This is as important as it will ever get.
If you live in Massachusetts, here's a link to the Mass Climate Action Network, which gives you a full list of planned activities.
If you don't live in Massachusetts, but you know someone who does...let them know about this.
And if you can make it to "Playing for the Planet," please come up and introduce yourself. You can purchase tickets online through a link at my website.
And if you're somewhere else in the world, please go to 350.org, and either find an action in your area on October 24, or start one yourself.
For example...
...there are presently three separate 350 actions scheduled to happen in Japan on the 24th of October.
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About www.350.org and the number 350:
Co-founded by environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, 350.org is the hub of a worldwide network of over two hundred environmental organizations, all with a common target: persuading the world's countries to unite in an effort to reduce global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million or less. Climatologist Dr. James Hansen says, "If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." (Dr. Hansen heads the NASA Institute for Space Studies in New York City, and is best known for his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in the 1980s that helped raise broad awareness of the global warming issue.) Activists involved in the 350 movement include Rajendra Pachauri (Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Vandana Shiva (world-renowned environmental leader and thinker), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1984 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and a global activist on issues pertaining to democracy, freedom and human rights), Van Jones, Bianca Jagger, Dr. James Hansen, Barbara Kingsolver and many more.
(complete list of "350 Messengers here)
About the Global Day of Climate Change Action on October 24th, 2009:
Here is the action page at www.350.org
Here is a discussion of the science behind the number 350.
Here is a description of the Day of Action on October 24th.
And once again, with feeling:
Please participate in an event on October 24. This is as important as it will ever get.