Basic Information

Participants：Five master’s and doctoral students in Music
Location：Moscow, Russian Federation
Period：Sept. 23-27, 2015

Achievements

This project aimed to promote global career development for distinguished young performers of traditional Japanese music at Tokyo University of the Arts (TUA), who intended to individually produce and perform at concerts including the one at the Nihon no Kokoro music festival organized by Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.  The participating students in the concert performance and pre-concert field study in Russia were selected from among applicants.

The project had four objectives which were as follows: creating opportunities to strategically draft and implement a plan for global career development, obtaining skills to work and communicate globally, establishing a personal network that is beneficial when working on the global stage, and making opportunities to obtain funding for realizing self-produced concerts. From preparation to actual events in Russia, all these objectives were achieved to a certain extent.

In Russia, the following events were realized, thanks to the great support from faculty members affiliated to the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

a. Individually produced performances at the Nihon no Kokoro music festival
b. Exchanges with the local traditional Japanese music community: discussions, observation of lessons, a joint performance, a trial performance by the pre-concert fieldworkers
c. Six entrepreneurship workshops in total
d. Observation of a traditional music performance by members of the folklore research center and a concert at the main hall of the conservatory.

The concert held as part of the Nihon no Kokoro music festival was so successful that some guests even had to remain standing up because they were unable to find their seats. Approximately a hundred guests were eagerly listening to the performances, and the venue was filled with a unique sense of unity. Audience in Moscow seemed to have a true thirst for traditional Japanese music, which was sensed from the manner in which people were listening to the music as well as the enthusiastic applause after the concert. It was also felt that such sensitivity of the Russian audience towards traditional Japanese music had been nurtured over the past 20 years by the World Music Cultures Center. The participating Japanese students witnessed that young performers of traditional Japanese music can succeed overseas if they can deal with language barriers or formalities for international travel, and that, as young performers, they can realize an international collaboration and even share an appreciation for Japanese traditional music with a global audience.

After the concert, the participating students received many voices of appreciation from the people of the local traditional Japanese music community including Dr. Karatygina, the head of the World Music Cultures Center. They kindly asked TUA to send both former and current students including this year’s participants to perform in the festival in the next academic year onwards. This was the biggest achievement for the participants in the sense that they could leave the possibilities for both themselves and their juniors to perform in Russia in the future.