Tag Archives: musical instrument

Shakuhachi Music

Striking Light, Striking Dark

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“If light comes, I will strike it. If dark comes, I will strike it.”
(Kyotaku Denki)

Poetry set to music

Original compositions by Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, Shakuhachi, & Sasha Bogdanowitsch, Voice & World Instruments. 2015.

I bought this CD at the WSF 2018 in London last August and I was very curious to listen to it. “Original compositions by Christopher Yohmei Blasdel & Sasha Bogdanowitsch”, and “Poetry from Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda, John Logan and Sam Hamill” was enough to intrigue me. I love poetry and I have been working myself for a long time about connecting music and words, in shows or with composers.

The first time I met Christopher Yohmei Blasdel was at the International Shakuhachi Festival in Prague in 2010 and got from him my first Kinko-ryū Chikumeisha shakuhachi lessons. How much I struggled on Hifumi Hachigaeschi no shirabe at that time! But the more you struggle, the deeper you remember the music! He was very patient with me and I enjoyed a lot his teaching, his playing during the concerts, and his Aikido-based workshops. His book “The Shakuhachi, A Manual of Learning” is a must to have in your shakuhachi books’ collection.
At the ISF Prague, I purchased his CD Visionary Tones and his book The Single Tone. Both are beautifully inspiring and I have a strong personal connection with the CD.

After a busy summer this year, one of the first things I did when I was back home was to listen to Christopher’s CD. I was immediately so captivated by its beauty and richness that I listened to it twice in a row, the first time listening “only” to the music, the second time while reading the texts I found on Christopher’s website (I am not an English native speaker).
Each piece is a little jewel.
Each piece takes you to its own world.
The connection between music and poetry is beautifully executed with high precision. Music and words enhance each other, reaching a new dimension.
It is so inspired and inspiring.

Below are some personal impressions about this very special CD. I hope this post will make you curious enough to listen to it (and guess what? You can also listen to it on Spotify!). Continue reading Striking Light, Striking Dark →

Shakuhachi practice

Warm-up Routines

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Whether I’m practicing for myself of for a performance, I always start my practice session with a warming-up. I have different routines and I always start with one of them.  I think it’s very important to have a routine to start your practice, something you don’t need to think about, but also something you do regularly and gets you into the concentration needed for your practice. Like a sporter, you need to warm up your muscles and breathing with easy exercises. My students know how much I love long tones and playing long tones with them. Long tones offer a wide range of variations such as dynamics, attacks and sound colours ; you can focus as well on your muscles tensions, body posture and breathing ; you can listen to the silence between the tones and the relationship between tones and silence ; you can also play them to meditate. Like any meditation, it can be short or long. I sometimes spend an hour playing long tones!

When I’m preparing for a performance, I’m more inclined to focus on technical skills that when I’m practicing for myself or for a meditation concert. Here is my routine. Continue reading Warm-up Routines →

Shakuhachi practice

Practicing daily

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It took 7 years between the day I first heard shakuhachi on a CD and my first shakuhachi lesson. And then another 8 years before I could make enough space in my life to consistently practice shakuhachi daily. As a flutist, I was of course already practicing regularly my Western flute, but didn’t have much time left for the shakuhachi. And I can assure you that from the moment I eventually had time to practice shakuhachi (almost) daily, it made a huge difference. I know this is quite obvious, but it really works. It’s true for every single music instrument, but it’s really critical for sound quality and intonation for the shakuhachi. In order to make progress, you need to practice regularly, even for short sessions. The shakuhachi is a flute asking you to make your own mouthpiece with your lips and mouth muscles. This is very subtle work, and if you don’t train regularly, you can’t build up properly the strength and endurance needed, neither the right balance between tension and relaxation. Playing shakuhachi is physical and should engage your entire body, like sport.
Maybe this sounds quite demanding, but I’ve seen many people getting disappointed (or even very frustrated) to discover that the shakuhachi was not “a kind of recorder” with which you can immediately and easily get a sound (don’t get me wrong, playing the recorder properly is also not easy, although the sound production is much more easier).

But sometimes, as shakuhachi is a particularly challenging instrument, you can have the feeling you’re not making much progress and it can be difficult to find motivation to carry on practicing. So here are some tips to help you hopefully to establish a daily routine and stick to it.

Continue reading Practicing daily →
Dementia

Light and shadow

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January 2018

After the Christmas holidays, when I went back to the dementia care house where I monthly play shakuhachi for the patients, A. told me that the departments had been closed for almost a month because of the Norovirus. Most of the patients were still weak and laid in bed. We had a relatively short session, nice though. I especially remember playing for P., a cheerful man who used to play piano and loves listening to music. He couldn’t get enough of it. One of the women was also very happy we came. It was as if she remembered me from the previous visit in November because she was immediately more receptive to the music. I find it so touching when the patients, although weak, strengthless or having trouble to control their movements, do their best to express their pleasure with giving me an applaus. I love to see a smile on their faces or in their eyes.

Continue reading Light and shadow →

Daily life, Dementia

September 2017

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My last visit to the dementia care house was nice again. It sounds quite repetitive if you’ve read my other posts about my visits, although it is each time different. I never know what is going to happen and I am always a little bit nervous what to expect. How can you prepare yourself to the unexpected?

Last time, I was in a busy period, I was tired, I wanted things to get done, and there I stand, waiting for A. to finish an endless conversation with people of the department, starting to get annoyed, thinking “this has nothing to do with me, I have so many other things to do”. And then I take my flute out of my bag and start to play to warm up, which I normally never do because I don’t need to, but today I do. It is not to warm up the flute, it is for me to calm down, to open my heart and be ready to meet the patients. And it works. A few breaths and my stress is gone, the outside world can wait, I’m happy to be here, I’m ready.

Continue reading September 2017 →

Meditation, Shakuhachi Performance

Performances

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I’ve been performing since I’m fifteen, and I’ve never learned how to do it. I didn’t even think there was something to learn about it. However, when you think back to how many  people get nervous when they have to perform, from good anxiety to total panic that they have to calm down with medicines or even stronger stuff, you start to ask yourself whether there might be somehow something to learn about it. I can still remember moments of total panic during competitions and it didn’t feel good. Playing music shouldn’t lead to this amount of stress. At a lower level, I also experienced the frustration of practicing so hard for a lesson and then not being able to play the way I wanted when in presence of my teacher and the other students. So, is there something you can do about it?

Continue reading Performances →

Shakuhachi Performance

Flutes

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It’s not always easy to find the right instrument, like to find the right partner for life. Sometimes you have to travel far away.
I started music with the recorder lessons of the primary school and I loved it (while most of my friends didn’t). But at that time, my fascination went to the piano, because of my mother’s LP’s I liked so much to listen to. Piano at home was no option so I ended up learning transverse flute at the local music school. When I was around 15, my godmother showed me that there existed other flutes in the world with bringing me back a flute from Nepal. Couldn’t do much with it but I found it nice with its decorations. Some years later, when I heard a musician playing a kind of transverse flute in Senegal, I went to meet him and bought one of his flute. My collection had started. The sound of this flute still evokes the memory of the land where I was born.

 

Continue reading Flutes →

Daily life, Dementia

Inspiration

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April 25 – May 23

Back today to the dementia care home where I’ve been playing for elderly people since 2014. Between today and my last visit on April 25, I gave three very different performances: the Requiem of Jenkins in the concert hall in Middelburg with orchestra, choir and soloist ; the musical show “Fureidesu” with the storyteller Gerard Jellema in Rotterdam, and the opening of the exhibition “Les Petites Peurs” by S.P.A.M. van Griensven also in Rotterdam. Different places, different audiences, different ways of listening, different ways of playing. And here I am today, back in Nijmegen for my monthly visit to the elderly people cuddling their Teddy bears, playing with toys and desperately roaming in the corridors trying to find their way home.

What a difference.

What am I going to play today?

Continue reading Inspiration →

Shakuhachi Performance

Agenda May-July 2017

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In the coming months, I’ll be performing in 5 different projects, which shows the diversity of possibilities of playing shakuhachi:
The Requiem of Karl Jenkins, May 4 in Middelburg (NL), Japanese tales, May 12 in Rotterdam and July 2 in Den Helder (NL), Les Petites Peurs, mixed media installation, May 20 in Rotterdam (NL), Les Cordes en Ballade, classical music festival, July 11 in Bourg-St-Andéol (FR) and The European Shakuhachi Society Summer School, July 27-30 in Vejle (DK).

Continue reading Agenda May-July 2017 →

Shakuhachi Performance

Karl Jenkins – Requiem

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The Requiem (2004) of Karl Jenkins is a very special piece to me. It is written for orchestra and choir (with a soprano solo part) and shakuhachi. In addition to the usual movements of a Requiem (Latin mass for the soul of the dead), Jenkins chose 5 Japanese haikus (poems) about the cycle of life and death. These poems are sung by the women of the choir, accompanied by the orchestra and a solo shakuhachi part. The music is written in Western notation, and can be played by a transverse flute instead, if there is no shakuhachi player. Of course, the effects and colours are then totally different. The Western notation allows the shakuhachi player to choose his/her own fingerings and lengths of flutes and go deeper in the music by making his/her own interpretation. This piece allows me to use my classical background as a flutist to perform Japanese shakuhachi in a classical music setting, uniting my two musical worlds.

I’ll be performing this piece on March 18 in Ede and on May 4 in Middelburg (The Netherlands). A nice opportunity for the audience to discover the shakuhachi “live”.

Continue reading Karl Jenkins – Requiem →