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Storytelling in the Galleries Japanese Spirits: The Living and the Dead Meet at the Info Desk at 5:45 p m

Hear tales of Japanese ghosts and what happens to those who fail to value the power of the human spirit.

UPcoming Programs

Symposium Japan’s Early Ambassadors to : Diplomats, Artists, and Friendship Dolls, 1860–1927 Saturday, November 6, 10:30 a m –4:30 p m $30 members; $47 non-members (includes museum admission and boxed lunch) Pre-registration required: [email protected]

In this one-day symposium scholars and community leaders will discuss three aspects of San Francisco’s early connections with Japan: 1) the 1860 first embassy from Japan to the US, which arrived in San Francisco, 2) the October 28, 2010 participation of Japanese immigrant artists in the cultural life of San Francisco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and 3) the Friendship Dolls sent from Japan to the US as “goodwill ambassadors” in 1927, part of a response to the 1924 Asian Exclusion Act prohibiting further immigration from Japan. This program is offered Japanese Ghosts in conjunction with the thematic exhibit Japan’s Early Ambassadors to San Francisco, 1860–1927 on view through November 21. and Golden Clouds

Cosponsored with the Society for Asian Art and the Kanrin Maru 150th Anniversary Committee.

Concert 5–9 Special Performance: Kitaro ART ACTIVITY: Mask Making, Ground Floor (North Court) Sunday, December 26, 2:00 p m CASH BAR: Ground Floor (North Court & South Court) $10 members; $27 non-members (includes museum admission and special exhibition surcharge) Tickets available only online: www.asianart.org 5:30 live jazz: Mark Izu and Friends featuring, Anthony Brown, Shoko Hikage, Mas Koga, Janet Koike and Grammy-award winning musician and composer Kitaro, known as the Debussy of Japan, has traveled the world Kathryn Cabunoc, 2nd Floor (Samsung Hall) sending his message of peace through music. He comes to the Asian Art Museum for a very special winter concert. Says Butoh artist Tamano of Kitaro, “His compositions have blown upon Asian winds across the oceans 5:45 and over the mountains, to rain down on people’s souls.” STORYTELLING in the galleries: Japanese Spirits: The Living and the Dead, meet at the Info Desk.

MATCHA is made possible with support from Stay tuned for MATCHA 2011 6:30 www.asianart.org/matcha.htm PERFORMANCE: Japanese Legends & Jazz: Brenda Wong Aoki performs “Mermaid Meat” with music per- formed by Mark Izu and Friends. 2nd Floor (Samsung Hall). Space is limited and first-come, first-served.

Get your nighttime arts Media Sponsors and culture fix at MATCHA! 7:15 Check us out on Facebook: DOCENT CONVERSATIONS: Beyond Golden Clouds, meet in any of the three special exhibition galleries. www.facebook.com/asianartmuseum Follow us on Twitter: 8 PERFORMANCE: Japanese Legends & Jazz: Brenda Wong Aoki performs “The Bell of Dojoji” with music www.twitter.com/asianartmuseum. Community Partners See photos from MATCHA performed by Mark Izu and Friends. 2nd Floor (Samsung Hall). Space is limited and first-come, first- (& upload your own): served. www.flickr.com/asianartmuseum. Raffle Sponsors After the event, let us know what you thought by taking an online survey. You might win a museum Thanks for coming out tonight! membership or gift card to our store! Share your feedback at www.asianart.org/matchasurveys.htm PERFORMANCE Dr. Anthony Brown (percussion) is a musician, composer, ethnomusicologist, Guggenheim Fellow, and a seminal figure in the contemporary, creative music scene. Since 1998, his Asian American Orchestra has received international critical Japanese Legends & Jazz acclaim for blending Asian musical instruments and sensibilities with the sonorities of The haunting eloquence of Brenda Wong Aoki’s Noh-style mono- the jazz orchestra. The orchestra’s recording of Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn’s Far East Suite received a 2000 GRAMMY nomination for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance. dramas with bass player and Japanese Jazz composer Mark Izu, Anthony Brown has received grants, fellowships, awards and commissions from, among the taiko (Japanese drums) of Janet Koike and Kathryn Cabunoc, others, Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, Meet the Composer, National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, TheatreWorks, and the MacDowell Colony. He has Anthony Brown on multiple percussion, Shoko Hikage on koto presented master classes, lectures and scholarly papers at the National Academy of Sciences, Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, Columbia University, the Franz Schubert Conservatory (Japanese stringed instrument), and Mas Koga on saxophone and (Vienna, Austria), and at every campus of the University of California. Dr. Brown has articles in The New Grove shakuhachi (Japanese end-blown flute). Please be advised that Encyclopedia of Music and The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History published with Simon & Schuster Macmillan. His book, Give the Drummer Some! The Development of Modern Jazz Drumming, is some content may not be suitable for children. forthcoming from the University of California Press.

Shoko Hikage (koto) studied koto under Chizuga Kimura of the Ikuta-ryu Sokyoku Seigen Kai in Akita Prefecture, Japan. In 1988, Hikage graduated from Takasaki college Brenda Wong Aoki blends Japanese Noh and Kyogen theater, Commedia Dell’arte, with a major in koto music, and she was accepted as a special research student in modern dance and everyday experience. She is acclaimed as one of America’s foremost Sawai Sokyoku, under Tadao and Kazue Sawai, where she subsequently received her soloists, performing in such venues as the Kennedy Center, New Victory Theater on master’s certificate. In 1992, she moved to Honolulu, Hawaii to teach koto at the Sawai Broadway, Hong Kong Performing Arts Center, the Adelaide Festival in Australia, the Koto Kai Hawaii and the University of Hawaii koto class. In 1997, she moved to San Esplanade in Singapore, the Graz Festival Austria and the Apollo. Twice a National Francisco, where she continues her pursuits in improvisational dance and music. Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Four-time Dramalogue Awardee, a Critics’ Circle www.shokohikage.com Award, and annual support from ASCAP for innovation in new libretto, Brenda’s book/ CD, Mermaid Meat and Other Japanese Ghost Stories was released in Tokyo in 2008 Mas Koga (saxophone, shakuhachi) has been a part of the creative music scene in the while she was a Japan-US Creative Arts Fellow. The Queen’s Garden (1999) and Tales San Francisco Bay Area for the past 15 years. He has traveled, recorded, and performed of the Pacific Rim (1990), won INDIE awards for Best Spoken Word Album of the Year. nationally with artists such as Hafez Modirzadeh, Francis Wong, Anthony Brown, Royal Her latest CD, Legend of Morning Glory, was released in Fall 2009. Of Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and Scottish Hartigan, John Carlos Perea, Wayne Wallace, Kat Parra, and . He is also the descent, Aoki’s bloodlines inspire her plays, which include Obake: Tales of Spirits Past and Present, The Queen’s director of SambAsia, an award winning San Francisco-based community samba school, Garden, Random Acts, Mermaid, Tales of the Pacific Rim, Skin Privilege, Kuan Yin: Our Lady of Compassion, teaching and performing Brazilian drums. Koga’s goal is to create music that respects Uncle Gunjiro’s Girlfriend and All We Leave. Brenda is currently working on a 2012 pageant play about the lost traditions and goes beyond styles and idioms, and ultimately helps diminish all other continent of MU. www.brendawongaoki.com forms of social boundaries. Mark Izu, an Emmy Award-winning composer and third generation Japanese-American, Janet Koike (taiko) has been featured in San Jose Taiko’s national concert tours, taking has fused the traditional music of Asia with African-American improvisation. Izu plays her from Arsenio Hall to Carnegie Hall. Blending traditional training with custom acoustic bass as well as several traditional Asian instruments such as the sheng (Chinese built techno-taiko, she has performed with D’CuCKOO and Cirque du Soleil. Koike has multi-reed instrument) and sho (Japanese multi-reed instrument). As the Artistic toured Indonesia with Keith Terry’s Body Tjak, Hong Kong with Mark Izu and Brenda Director of the Asian American Jazz Festival for 15 years, Izu has gained national and Wong Aoki, and she has performed with Jennifer Berezan, Kenny Endo, Ondekoza’s international attention for developing a new musical genre, Asian American Jazz, Marco Lienhard, Anthony Brown with the Asian Jazz Orchestra and Theatre Yugen. and has performed with artists such as , Steve Lacy, Zakir Hussain, Kent She is the founder of Maze Daiko, which just returned from performing at the North Nagano, George Lewis, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Brown, and . Izu has composed American Taiko Conference in LA. Janet is also the founder of the Rhythmix Cultural scores for film, live music concerts and theater. In 2009 Izu won an Emmy Award for Works, (RCW) a new community art center in Alameda. Outstanding Music for his score in Bolinao 52. His film scores include Steven Okazaki’s Academy Award-winning Days of Waiting; Emmy Award-winning documentary, Return to the Valley; and a Kathryn Cabunoc (taiko) has been taken on journeys through her drumming, from new score for the DVD release of Sessue Hayakawa’s 1909 masterpiece, The Dragon Painter (Milestones DVD street festivals and Matura in the Bay Area, to participating in a KASA/Mix tour, to the 2007). His theater scores have been performed at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and Sundance Festival world famous Kodo Apprentice Center on Sado Island, Japan. Most recently, Kathryn and he was awarded a Dramalogue Award for Best Original Music & two INDIE Awards for best CD. His record- has recorded and performed with First Voice, and currently teaches taiko classes at ings include The Queen’s Garden (INDIE Award 1999), Tales of the Pacific Rim( INDIE Award 1990), Circle of Rhythmix Cultural Works in Alameda. Fire (Top 10 picks of the year, SF Bay Guardian), and recordings with the Grammy nominated Asian American Orchestra. Izu’s CD Threading Time featuring masters Togi Suenobu (Gagaku) and Zakir Hussain (tabla) was Japanese Legends and Jazz is a First Voice production. released in Tokyo in 2007. Izu was also a founding faculty member of Stanford’s Institute of Diversity for the First Voice generously supported by the Zellerbach Family Fund, Grants Arts in 2002. for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission and the Hewlett Foundation.