Pre-Concert Lecture on Japanese Music & Dance

Name: Pre-Concert Lecture on Japanese Music & Dance
Start: 2025-09-20T17:30:00-04:00
Location: Watkins Lecture Hall, Earl V. Moore Building, 1100 Baits Dr., Ann Arbor

Schedule

Sat, 20 Sep, 2025 at 05:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Watkins Lecture Hall, Earl V. Moore Building, 1100 Baits Dr., Ann Arbor | Ann Arbor, MI

Please note: This event will be held in person at Watkins Lecture Hall and will also be streamed at https://smtd.umich.edu/live-stream-watkins/
Join us for a Pre-Concert Lecture with guest artists David Furumoto (Onoe Kikunobuhide), David Kansuke Wheeler, Yoko Hiraoka, and Tsukasa Taiko.
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Presented as part of a series: "A Celebration of Japanese Music and Dance: The Ethnomusicology Legacy of Professor William P. Malm." View the complete schedule at: https://myumi.ch/79rM5
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Professor William P. Malm was one of the foremost ethnomusicologists of Japanese music and one of the founding figures of ethnomusicology in the United States. His pioneering work has influenced countless musicians, scholars, and students. A faculty member at the University of Michigan from 1960 to 1996, Professor Malm authored the first English-language study of Japanese music and instruments, and developed a distinguished graduate program that brought international perspectives to the field. As director of the university's Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments, he brought together high level scholarship, curation, and performance; acquired important instruments including the first commercially made Moog Synthesizer; and founded the U-M Gamelan Ensemble. He contributed significantly to the understanding of music across Asia through research and teaching, and was recognized with numerous honors, including the Fumio Koizumi Prize in Ethnomusicology and the Order of the Rising Sun from the Japanese government.
ABOUT THE GUEST ARTISTS
David Furumoto is a professor emeritus from the Department of Theatre and Drama at the University Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught in the acting and directing program for 21 years. He earned both his A.B. and M.F.A. at the University of Hawai’i-Manoa, focusing on traditional Asian theatre performance. While a student, he performed in numerous English-language premieres of Kabuki plays, including notable roles such as Benkei in Kanjincho and Yuranosuke in Chushingura. In 1982, he received the Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship to study as a special observer at the National Theatre of Japan’s kabuki training class. He also holds a professional title from the Onoe School of Classical Japanese Dance.
Musician and musicologist David Kansuke Wheeler spent twenty years in Japan studying and performing the shakuhachi with traditional masters and ensembles, beginning in Tokyo in 1977 under Kinko ryū master Junsuke Kawase III (Kansuke I). In 2008, in recognition of three decades of performing, producing, and teaching, he received the performance name Kansuke II. Wheeler has played a central role in every major world shakuhachi festival since 1994. In 1999, he co-founded the Shakuhachi Summer Camp of the Rockies, which held its 26th camp in June 2024. Now based in Boulder, he aims to cross musical and artistic barriers both within and outside of the Japanese traditional performing arts world.
Yoko Hiraoka is a senior master performer of koto (13-string zither), shamisen (3-string lute), biwa (4- or 5-string lute), and voice. Born in Kyoto, she studied Ikuta-ryū koto and shamisen music from an early age, earning the Dai-Shihan (Grand Master) title from Sōmei Ongaku-kai, Tokyo. She also studied Chikuzen biwa with Kōka Suga, a prominent leader of Kōmyōji-ryū and disciple of Yamazaki Kyokusui, the Living National Treasure. For over forty years, Ms. Hiraoka has performed, and lectured extensively on Japanese traditional music at leading universities, major festivals, on television and radio, and on studio recordings.
Tsukasa Taiko, a program of the nonprofit organization Asian Improv aRts Midwest, aims to preserve, develop, and pass on traditional concepts of Japanese art as a cultural legacy, while also expanding taiko as an art form. Its professional unit, Gintenkai, inherits compositions from Tokyo’s 1970s underground theater and music scene, bringing them to the contemporary stage with complex, refined arrangements. These works emphasize musical phrasing over rhythmic patterns and feature choreographic dance to retain an authentic Japanese aesthetic. Tsukasa reincorporates geza music using shamisen and shinobue, reinforcing historical ties between music, dance, and theater. Performers include Kioto Aoki, Miyumi Aoki, and Neil Ducklow.
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Co-organized by: Center for Japanese Studies; Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments. Co-sponsorship from: School of Music, Theatre & Dance; International Institute; Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Center for Chinese Studies; Nam Center for Korean Studies; Center for South Asian Studies; and Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
Sponsored in part by the William P. Malm Stearns Collection Concert Series & Instrument Preservation Fund and the Virginia Martin Howard Lecture Series Endowment.