Kiku Day - Master of the Japanese Shakuhachi Flute

Kiku Day - Master of the Japanese Shakuhachi Flute

Doors @ 7:00pm

Music @ 7:30pm

Join us for a mesmerizing evening with Kiku Day, master of the shakuhachi -- a traditional Japanese bamboo flute. This in person event will be held at The University of Winnipeg's EG Hall (3rd floor).

Get ready to be transported to the serene & moving world of Japanese music with Kiku Day's profound playing. This concert will explore contemporary compositions and pieces from the classical Zensabo & Myōan repertoires, whose history reaches back hundreds of years. Don't miss this unique opportunity to experience the beauty of the Shakuhachi flute in person!

This is event is hosted by the Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba with support from the Japanese Canadian Legacies Foundation.

Kiku Day is a shakuhachi player and ethnomusicologist – and a world traveler from Copenhagen, Denmark, who is working at the intersections of performance of traditional shakuhachi music, contemporary music, composition and improvisation, ethnomusicology, history, politics, meditation and writing.

Kiku Day studied shakuhachi with Okuda Atsuya – one of the foremost performers of jinashi shakuhachi – in Tokyo Japan for 11 years before she returned to Europe to study ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London. She pursued her MFA in Music Performance at Mills College, Oakland, USA. Here she studied new music performance and improvisation on shakuhachi with Fred Frith, Jon Raskin, Joëlle Léandre, Anne LeBaron, Steed Cowart among others. She has most recently studied the classical Fuke Myōan style with Seian Genshin, the 42nd Kansu of Myōan-ji Temple.

The shakuhachi is a bamboo flute which has been played in Japan for hundreds of years. Until the late 1800s it was played by a group of Zen Buddhist monks, who travelled from town to town, playing music while begging for donations. Their spiritual tradition continues into the present day, and classical shakuhachi music is strongly associated with meditation.

Learn to play shakuhachi

Contact us to learn more about shakuhachi lessons for beginners and musicians, hosted at the Japanese Cultural Association of Manitoba.