Basic information

Participants: Nine current and former students of traditional Japanese music
Location: Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
Period: Oct 22-28, 2017

Achievements

Aiming to promote global career development for young performers of traditional Japanese who intend to individually produce and perform at overseas concerts, this project assists in their undertakings from logistical arrangements to the implementation of events.

In 2017, the fourth year since the launch of the project, the two respective groups of performers and preliminary research members successfully implemented three events in Saint Petersburg, the city where the project made debut in the previous year. They performed at two concerts during the International Conservatory Week Festival 2017 that was hosted by the Saint Petersburg State Conservatory, and also at the Artistic Meeting, the exchange concert of traditional music instruments by Russian, Armenian, and Japanese musicians. All these events successfully ended, attracting local collaborators and audiences and receiving a number of questions about the traditional Japanese musical instruments and music pieces performed, as well as Kimono that was considered to symbolize Japan.

While the first step for the participants to develop a global career was to perform their respective instruments in front of foreign audiences, the next step was to have a closer contact with local audiences and collaborators, and fellow performers of each event. They were trying to take the second step in their own ways, actively promoting themselves as musicians.

Those who performed in the project for the first time successfully managed to perform with confidence, exhibiting their abilities to attract the audience in Russia. Their performance and behavior reflected their pride that they were representing young Japanese musicians, and also their determination that they would carry on the traditional of classical Japanese music while advocating contemporary pieces performed with traditional instruments. They aimed to introduce traditional Japanese culture to the foreign audience and connect them with the power of music. Thus, they made social contributions by participating in the friendly activities between Japan and Russia.

This year’s members included two former students who had regularly participated in the project from the launch year. They successfully lead the novice participants as escorting staff and senior performers, which were their expected roles. Furthermore, they fully made use of the opportunity to exert their leadership in guiding their juniors who wished to leap to the global stage. Indeed, the fourth year was remarkable in the sense that the project was carried out under the leadership of the senior participants, and their experience as performers that had been acquired during the last few visits to Russia was handed over to their posteriors. It was an ideal outcome of the project and the significance of continuing the project was thus confirmed. Furthermore, it was observed that all the performing and research members were individually striving to find ways to step up to the global stage, starting to focus on their respective goals by contemplating what musician they want to be in the future.

It is expected that the achievements of this project will expand the possibilities of young aspiring performers by facilitating them to globally compete and providing them an activity base that it to be succeeded by later generations. It is also hoped that the project will be continued to deliver traditional Japanese music to the world’s audience and to develop fields, if only slowly, for our students to achieve a global career.