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Ancient Japanese dance performance a highlight of national conference

September 25, 2006

GagakuThumb.jpgA group of 31 dancers and musicians from Japan will present a public performance of gagaku - Japan's oldest music and dance tradition - in Armidale this week.

The performance, in the Auditorium of the C.B. Newling Building (the "Old Teachers' College") at 7.30 pm on Saturday 30 September, is a highlight of the National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia (MSA), being held this year in Armidale.

Associate Professor Hugh de Ferranti, Lecturer in Japanese Studies at The University of New England, has worked closely with the conference organisers in bringing the gagaku group to Armidale with the support of "2006 Australia-Japan Year of Exchange" funding from the Japanese Government. "With 31 musicians and dancers, dramatic sets and choreographed dance, this will be a real spectacle - and a first for Armidale's music lovers," Dr de Ferranti said.

UNE and the Northern NSW Chapter of the MSA are co-hosting the conference, which runs from Wednesday 27 September to Sunday 1 October. A keynote address on Saturday by Professor Steven Nelson from Hosei University in Japan will examine the adaptation of ideals and practices in the transplantation of gagaku from China to Japan in the 7th to 10th centuries. A short talk on this ancient music and dance of the Imperial Japanese court, and a demonstration of its exotic musical instruments, will precede the performance on Saturday evening.

The performers will be the Kyokusui Gagaku Kai (pictured here), a community-based group from Tenri, in Nara Prefecture, dedicated to teaching and performing gagaku. Tenri is a small town in which the majority of the residents are members of the Tenri-kyo faith. The importance of gagaku for the practice of Tenri-kyo has resulted in the founding of several groups: some maintained by the religious organisation, and others - like the Kyokusui Gagaku Kai - by residents of the town.

The C.B.Newling Building is the venue for the MSA National Conference. Music researchers from throughout Australia and from the UK, the United States, Turkey and Russia will come together to discuss a wealth of topics relating to the theme of the conference: "Music as Local Tradition and Regional Practice".

"I am very pleased that the conference organisers have been able to invite such outstanding international researchers to Armidale," said UNE's Dr Jason Stoessel, co-convener of the conference. "For example, Professor James Grier from the University of Western Ontario is the world authority on Ademar de Chabannes, an eleventh-century composer-monk whose colourful life is the subject of his new book to be published around the time of the conference by Cambridge University Press."

Tickets to the gagaku performance are available at Dymocks and Readers Companion, and at the door. Another public concert associated with the conference will be a performance by the Armidale a capella choir Fiori Musicali, directed by UNE Music lecturer Dr Rex Eakins, of Dr Eakins's new edition of Gaspar van Weerbeke's Missa O Venus bant (Ursuline Chapel, Friday 29 September, 5.30 pm).

Two special music lectures have been scheduled to coincide with the conference: a talk by Oxford University musicologist Professor Reinhard Strohm (UNE's 2006 Gordon Athol Anderson Memorial Lecture) in Armidale Town Hall on Thursday 28 September (7.30 pm), and a talk by the well-known classical music broadcaster Charles Southwood in the C.B. Newling Auditorium on Friday 29 September (12.30 pm). These are both free public lectures, and everyone is welcome.

For more information on the conference and its special events, go to: http://www.une.edu.au/music/MSAconf/ or ring (02) 6773 6563.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at September 25, 2006 02:48 PM