The Kitchen Presents Midori Takada

The Kitchen presents a live performance by percussionist, composer, and theater artist Midori Takada (May 21). With an encyclopedic knowledge of Asian and African percussive traditions and a clear kinship with Reich and Glass, Takada creates lucid yet expansive sonic textures-variously labeled as ambient, minimal, or mystical. In dialogue with the peak period ambient and Fourth World musics explored by Jon Hassell, Don Cherry, and Brian Eno, but born of a distinctly Japanese meditative musical sensibility, her work has a crystalline quality that distills rhythms from around the world. Playing solo on marimba and a variety of other percussion instruments, every live performance she gives is unique and particular to each space and occasion. Organized by Matthew Lyons.

Takada debuted on the scene of the Berlin Philharmonic, performing with the RIAS Symphonie-Orchester Berlin just after graduation from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1974, and continued her career with solo concerts in Japan and abroad. In the 1980s, finding fundamental philosophical qualms with Western classical traditions, she began to explore the traditional music of Asia and Africa, resulting in joint projects with Kakraba Lobi from Ghana, Lamine Konte from Senegal, Farafina Band from Burkina Faso, and Korean musicians such as zither player Chi Seong-Ja, flutist Won-Il, and saxophonist Kang Tae-Hwan; she performed with free-jazz band Ton-Klami, and led Mkwaju Ensemble's innovative percussion project.

She has said of Western classical music that it "uses its energy and spirit towards instigating an outward-bound offensive and a course of domination, not a spirit based on building one's inner self," and that she found African and Asian music to be more "directed inward." She says, similarly, that minimalism "does not place an emphasis on the expression of emotions. More specifically, it disavows expression itself." Takada's hypnotic, minimalist music is based in the concept of coherence between sound and the human body. Her music is filled with the concept of infinity, with melodies looping and splintering, rhythms breaking and thickening and slowly drawing the listener into another reality.

In 1983, she released Through the Looking Glass, deemed by Pitchfork, (upon its reissue by record labels Palto Flats & WRWTFWW in 2017), "one of the most dazzling works of minimalism," allowing listeners to "soar to a space well within themselves." Long renowned in Japanese vanguard circles, Takada's more global recognition-and the ensuing reissue of Through the Looking Glass, and now this, her first ever U.S. tour-came about in the 2010s. The vinyl of Through the Looking Glass itself slowly grew in value, as "one of the rarest artifacts of early 1980s Japanese music" (Dazed)-with copies selling online for $750. But its rarefied existence altered drastically when in 2013 it was placed on YouTube, and when the platform's "play next" algorithm seemingly recognized its structural kinship with other minimalist works, and started recommending the largely forgotten album liberally to fitting listeners. It earned over 2 million views before it was taken down and replaced by an officially sanctioned version.

Apart from the solo albums she's released (Through the Looking Glass and 1999's Tree of Life), Takada has performed regularly for 20 years with internationally renowned theater artist Tadashi Suzuki and his Suzuki Company of Toga, whose staging and training-taught worldwide-rejects the emotion-centricity of traditional Western theater practices, placing emphasis on the actor's ability to find a state of awareness and command attention through a hyper-focus on the physical and vocal before the emotional. She has composed for acclaimed adaptations by the company of works like Electra and King Lear.

In Takada's performances at the Kitchen, audiences familiar with her work may recognize fragments and echoes of rhythms from Through the Looking Glass-but her live performances never seek to duplicate her former or recorded works, nor can they. Through the Looking Glass was self-produced and recorded alone over the course of two days, with every instrument (including a coke bottle) played by Takada, and separate takes made on analog tape and given an uncanny quality through overdubbing. With instruments arranged dynamically across the stage, Takada's performances are their own individual works, with Takada working spatially and physically, blurring concert and theater.

The performance takes place May 21 at 8pm at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street). Tickets, $25 general, $20 members, are available online at thekitchen.org; by phone at 212.255.5793 x11; and in person at The Kitchen, Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2:00-6:00 P.M.

About The Kitchen

The Kitchen is one of New York City's most forward-looking nonprofit spaces, showing innovative work by emerging and established artists across disciplines. Our programs range from dance, music, performance, and theater to video, film, and art, in addition to literary events, artists' talks, and lecture series. Since its inception in 1971, The Kitchen has been a powerful force in shaping the cultural landscape of this country, and has helped launch the careers of many artists who have gone on to worldwide prominence.

Facebook: facebook.com/TheKitchenNYC
Twitter: twitter.com/TheKitchen_NYC
Instagram: instagram.com/TheKitchen_NYC

To post a comment, you must register and login.