- Sean and I met like several years ago, 2018, 19? Something like that. Pre-COVID, yes. And then we worked
- on a few projects together since then. And this is the first time making music together in person, which
- doesn't really feel like it, because we've known each other quite some time. He is a Meiyoshi Han, which
- is his highest rank of Shakuhachi tradition. And he is
- my shakuhachi teacher. And I learned so much about Japanese culture, Japanese Aesthetism, Japanese music
- from him. And he was the one who inspired me to go back to my musical roots. And my sort of artistic
- voice, my artistic sort of input is really based on around, you know, the interaction that I had with
- him, interaction that I had with this instrument. So I'm really excited to share with you all this man. So
- Without further ado, Sean, would you mind maybe briefly introduce yourself? And I think we are interested
- in how you really came into this instrument. Well, first off, I want to say thank you for having me.
- And like he said, this is our first time making music. But when that first note came out for us that
- the orchestra was together with the shakuhachi, it just felt so natural.
- really easy. So even though it's such a difficult piece, I mean, this guy makes it really easy.
- So I'm really, you guys are really lucky to have him here in Bloomington. So as he said, my name is
- Sean Tidy Head. I am American, obviously, but you wouldn't know by the clothes, but I really
- had always had an affinity for Asian culture when I was a kid. I remember even the first time seeing
- Asian characters. I can't even remember what language it was. I'm pretty sure it was either Chinese
- or Japanese. And I just asked my mom, what's that up there? And she's like, I don't know. It's probably Asian.
- Very good observation, mother. Thank you so much. But later I would find out that those were kind of
- the languages I was really interested in. It was also the culture I was really interested in. So I loved
- watching animation. I was a huge Dragon Ball fan, Dragon Ball Z.
- I wear those badges with pride as loving an anime. And I also loved old samurai films. But there was
- at one point at the bottom of the screen that I was stuck. I could only read the subtitles to understand
- what was happening in the shows. So part of it was I really wanted to learn the language so that I could
- actually watch the anime. I could actually watch the films without having to constantly look down and
- rewind to see what they were saying.
- But inside those films, this instrument was heavily used to color the scenes. And so one of the most
- popular colors that is used in that is this sound. And so I can see the head nodding. It's like, I know
- that sound. And I didn't know that this was the instrument.
- And so later I saw this instrument and I saw someone playing it and I thought, that's the thing I want
- to learn. Meanwhile, up until that time, I had been studying violin and viola, composition, and I even
- got myself into a really nice music school before I even graduated high school. But then I just started
- playing it. I thought nothing of it. I just loved playing the instrument. And lo and behold, it became
- the thing I do as a career, amazingly.
- Yeah. Well, that's amazing. You know, the special thing about Sean is not only he's very knowledgeable
- about Japanese culture, Japanese ethosism or Japanese music, but he speaks like a really random guy
- from Osaka prefecture. And there's a strong dialect, Kansai-ben. And then, you know, when I spoke to
- him for the first time in Japanese, I was so shocked.
- Why is this guy speaking like my relative from Osaka? And it was interesting. We made, I don't know
- if you remember this, but we made a few video series when we were working together in Japan on Aesthetism,
- the Japanese Aesthetism. There are really interesting philosophical idea of Japanese Aesthetism and
- you will hear and you feel in this piece that we're going to play. But he would make those films in
- Japanese, in Kansai-ben. It was so funny.
- And yeah, so just speaking of those Japanese Aesthetism, you know, you have such a prolific, like extended
- training in Western music, you went to conservatory. What would you say, you know, like the main difference
- when we were perceiving like Western art, Western music versus, you know, Eastern or Eastern music or
- even like Japanese music, Japanese art?
- Yeah, the Japanese aesthetic is very interesting. In our Western world, we are dominated by tonic, pre-tonic,
- dominance, and tonic once returned. So that's basically very fancy language to say, one, four, five,
- one, and then repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. That is the essence and the backbone of classical music.
- And some would even just argue and say it's just one, five. It's tonic and dominance and then back to
- the tonic again.
- And so this harmonic structure, since the days of Bach, is what has really defined the voice of Europe.
- But in Japan, they don't have necessarily the tonic dominant relationship in the same sense that we
- do. Now, they do have that kind of relationship, and you can hear it in the music, but both the tonic
- and the dominant have stopping locations, which means that you can end on either one, and it feels right.
- It feels complete. So the best way I could probably explain
- is that Western music is highly goal oriented. It's always moving forward and wants to go to the next
- place to express the next idea. Where Japanese music rather wants to stay on the single note in the
- single tone and express that idea through tone colors. So the way that the sound of that individual
- note develops and changes over time is much more interesting than the way that in the West we would
- say how the harmony develops over time.
- Yeah, that's really great. And I think you will hear definitely in the piece that we're going to play
- this idea of a single sound. And even that sound disappears, and there's a silence. You hear, you feel
- something that kind of resonates you during this silence. My favorite composer, Japanese composer, Takemitsu,
- would say that the silence is as intense as the sound that you hear.
- And you really feel you get to experience that in this piece that we're going to play. But before we
- jump into the piece, I would love to sort of get to know Sean more with your, you know, you've lived
- in Japan for how many years? Six years, just under six years. Six years. And you went to Japan,
- you know, on the tour, performing there. What would you say like the most memorable moment that you
- had with this instrument?
- The most interesting moment was actually a collection of hikes that I did with one of my best friends
- in Japan. He's a Buddhist monk and has been living in Japan for now over 25 years. And one of the things
- that I loved doing with this instrument was I loved to just train my body with it. So I would hike up
- mountains and play the flute at the same time, you know, play pieces in different parts of the winter,
- like dead of winter.
- And I think the most memorable moment was the first time we went hiking. We were in full kimono garb,
- but it was like negative two degrees outside. It was very cold. And we hiked up one of the main mountains
- in Nara to the top where you could see the entire, basically all of Nara city, all of Katsuragi and
- some other cities as well. And even though it was so
- brutally cold at the top of the mountain. I mean, when I looked over at my friend's face, I'm like,
- wow, this place is so gorgeous. It's just so beautiful. And his head is red as a tomato. And then we're
- starting to get down. And then I felt it. I felt like, wow, that was really cold. And as I'm walking
- down the mountain and we're still stopping and playing our flutes a couple of places, again, it's minus
- 2 degrees. These things ain't moving fast. One of my slippers broke. And so I had to do the rest of
- the hike barefoot.
- And when I got to the bus stop, I sat there, and he's sitting next to me, and I was looking at my arm,
- and I was like, I wonder how fast I can close this.
- didn't move, and I was like, uh-oh. But it was like a really incredible experience to push my body to
- the limits. And I think it was a physical representation of what we do sonically in music, is how far
- can I push the music sonically to make something digestible for my audience member, that they can really
- hear the narration and the story that goes along with it. So that's probably the most vivid memory I
- have of Japan.
- Do you want to go with me? Maybe not. I don't deal with the cold. As you know, some of the BSL folks,
- it's just brutal to survive through this winter in Bloomington. I mean, we can go in the summer when
- it's 95% humidity and 104 degrees. I mean, it's a good time. Your flute will be very sharp. That's true.
- Yes. Yes. Living in Japan is some sort of life exercise sometimes.
- But no, that's great. You know, one other thing I am curious about, because you are also one of the
- few teachers, shakuhachi teachers, who teach this instrument to not only just Japanese people like me,
- but also you introduce these instruments to the people from around the world. As a teacher, or even
- as you are a student, you are taking lessons from various Japanese masters,
- Are there any sort of differences in teaching between the sort of Western style of teaching and Japanese
- style of teaching? And do you think that sort of has some reflection on the Japanese culture, the teaching?
- Yeah, definitely in the West, we've developed the idea of the conservatory. And so we can teach things
- systematically.
- As Westerners, we love to systemize things. We like to, you know, find the truth of it. We like to identify
- the historical moments. Myth, though we have it, we don't relish in myth as much as the East does. So
- we're more interested in what is factually true, what is how it is done. I think of a very common German
- aesthetic of the 19th century, for example, which is Verktreuer,
- probably saying it terribly, but it means faithfulness to the work, which is where we try to not do
- anything of our own doing, but we want to see exactly what does the score say and what is the composer's
- original intention. This, for example, is so intense in the West that even Czerny, when he would improvise
- on a 5-6-4 chord of Beethoven's piano concerto, he was a student of Beethoven, by the way, the critics
- said, you don't mess with God's music.
- And so I was like, but I studied with him. He did that. But we really love systemizing in the West.
- Now in the East, there is a different approach, which is basically, that's what my teacher did. And
- so to break away from that's what my teacher did is very difficult, but it's not systematized. Because
- every teacher will do it different. Every school has a very different interpretation of even the same
- pieces that are shared.
- So, and as far as even teaching pedagogically, it's much more of just do what I say and do what I do,
- not so much, you know, here's how it's done. Just watch me and then copy. A good example of this is
- one of the famous shakuhachi teachers, Yamaguchi Goro, would play the piece for the student the first
- week. Then he would let the student play and he would play with them on the second week.
- And then on the third week he would sing with the student and on the fourth week he would let the student
- play alone. He'd say, good, now polish it. There was not much, basically all the words he said was,
- good, now polish it. So not a lot of verbal explanation on the pieces as much as we would in the West.
- Yeah, I can relate to that. So I don't know, for those who don't know me, I used to race motorcycle.
- And my coach was my dad. And he that doesn't surprise me. Yes. And, you know, he doesn't really say
- anything other than the fact do well, do better, do well, do better.
- And just this kind of repetition of things is something that is very inherent in Japanese teaching style.
- And by the way, if you, after this concert, are interested in learning the shakuhachi, he has a really
- great studio.
- And not only just in person lessons, he has thousands of YouTube videos that you can watch. And I highly
- recommend you all to go watch some of the videos. And if you start wanting to learn this instrument,
- it's really accessible. Right? I think it's very accessible. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to say it's difficult,
- and then it'll scare them off. Right, that's right.
- Since you're here a little earlier, would you show mind maybe just sharing some of the snippets of what
- this instrument sounds like? Just a few examples of, you know, technique that you're going to use in
- this Hosokawa's piece and maybe explain, you know, because there are, you know, a lot of symbolism with
- this instrument in relation to Japanese culture or Japanese nature.
- I think there's a question somewhere in there. I can find it. I'll search. The instrument, the shakuhachi
- instrument, I like to say it has four voices. This is four voices. The first voice is the chant.
- So the chant voice would come from something like in Buddhism, where they would chant a sutra.
- So for example, they have the hanyashingo, which is the heart sutra. They have busetsumaka hanyahala
- mitashingo, something like this. That kind of voice, more a little bit of monotone holding the sound
- of it, but like listening to the color of the vowels change. The second one is the voice of shomyo,
- which is the liturgical singing of
- Japanese Buddhism sounds something like this. Something like that.
- then we'll have the voice of nature, and then we'll have the voice of special effects. So I'll show
- you first the simplest one, which is basically usually a single tone, and that sounds like this.
- Now we have the voice of Xomyo. The voice of nature.
- my favorite, the special effects. So something like that. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's great. Maybe this is a
- good moment to shift our conversation to the piece that we're going to play.
- Ah, yes. So this is called Autumn Wind by Toshio Hosokawa. She is a living Japanese composer based in
- Berlin and also in Japan. Yeah, would you like to maybe talk about the piece and maybe the composer?
- Yes, we're doing Autumn Wind in Spring. There's a very interesting reason for that too. Last year, Spring
- was calling and we had a baby. And so then we had to move the concert to the Spring because we actually
- had our third daughter
- on August 21st of last year. So there was no way that we were flying from Japan with a two-month-year-old
- to make this happen, so we had to move it. But even though it is Autumn Wind, I think that has to do
- more of when it was composed. So Autumn is when he composed it, basically the end of September. And
- then he chose Wind, I believe, because it's with the shakuhachi. But the piece really can fit at any
- time of the year because it's an expression of nature. And so
- How many of you have been hiking out in the woods or camping? Oh, that's great. Sometimes I go into
- a city and then no one raises their hands. I'm like, who has been outside? Now, in those hiking times,
- one of the things that you get to experience is all the different sounds of the birds, all the different
- sounds of different types of winds that go against different types of trees. Every once in a while,
- you hear a wild boar, and then you run afterwards.
- And then, of course, you get the sound of water and sound of rocks, things kind of cracking and moving
- and flowing, and that's exactly what you're going to hear in this piece. You're not going to hear that
- one, four, five, one. At least I don't think so. It might be there, but I've never heard it. It is very,
- very dense harmonically. There's so much happening. There's a lot of really close notes. I wish we had
- the violinist up here to kind of do like the
- But like that, when you hear those effects in the music, you're gonna hear like the string players push.
- It's called over pressure. They push really hard on the bow and it kind of sounds like it's cracking
- or like a creaking door. But it's like the sounds of like a tree almost like, you know, loosening a
- limb or something like that. And then you'll hear like the brass players in the back going shh. And
- it's not because the other brass players are being loud. I know that's usually the case.
- But this is actually because they want to create different types of effects of like the distant ocean
- or, you know, wind going through the pines and so on and so forth. So it's like a collage of different
- types of sounds that we would hear in nature, but it's just done inside the concert hall with all these
- amazing instruments. And then the lone shakuhachi solo, to me, it's like the voice of man.
- Sometimes it's in praise of just, wow, God, this thing that you've made for us. How beautiful is this
- creation that you've given us? And other times it's like, oh my God, why did you make tsunamis? This
- is terrifying. And you get like all of the range of nature in this one piece. It's really quite something.
- Yeah, definitely. And this is, you know, obviously going to be a little slightly different than like
- a normal, you know, classical music scene, as you said, like, you know, the Western, you know. Yeah,
- there's no major chords there. Right. There's no major chords. Yeah. So, but if you just let that notion
- just, you know, if you just stay away from the notion for a second, and you just immerse yourself into
- this piece, I assure you, you will hear at least something that you can recognize from that work.
- in the nature. Yeah, and I don't feel like I have to defend the piece even though it's very avant-garde.
- I think that it has to come with just a different approach. Like when we go to a classical music concert,
- a lot of times we think, okay, yeah, there's Mozart, there's Beethoven, there's Bach, or Brahms, I love
- Brahms. We have this sort of like the same composers that we hear all the time of a wonderful tradition
- of harmonic music.
- But this just requires a different type of listening, which is you're not trying to find where the person
- is wanting to go in their composition. There is no goal. That's the most important thing to know about
- this music. There is no goal. So for example, back to the people that were hiking. When you get to the
- lake and you're kind of sitting there, what's the goal of sitting at the lake?
- sitting at the lake, right? I want to just enjoy what's around me. And, you know, sometimes the caribou
- come out, sometimes the birds come out, and you just enjoy whatever sound comes. And this is the same
- way this piece is to be enjoyed, is that as you sit back, even close your eyes, you can take a nap,
- take a nap by the lake, right?
- let the sounds come by and say, yeah, that really reminds me of this experience that I had, and I heard
- that same sort of sound out in nature. And I think that's the true intention behind pieces like this.
- Absolutely. And you don't really also feel like one, two, three, four, the metric thing. It's in four.
- Yeah. But I don't feel it. Right.
- So it's really, I think, a different experience that I'm really excited to share. Yeah, it's always
- great to share experiences like this, because it's not the type of, my friend runs a radio station,
- which is not your grandmother's classical music. This is definitely not your grandmother's classical
- music. Definitely. Great. Well, yeah, shall we take a few questions from the audience? Absolutely. I
- love questions. Yeah. Yes.
- Yeah, I would like to say that it's a neurological condition, but it's not. It's actually the techniques
- of the shakuhachi. The movements from left to right is actually how I create vibrato. And it actually
- helps to create a vibrato that's much closer to the human voice, where the vibrato goes up and down,
- not just down and up like a violin or viola. Great question. Any other questions? Yes, back there.
- There's not really much you can do at that point. It's usually, it just is, especially when it's very
- hot. Like this room is very dry, right? Not just the, I mean, the acoustics are okay, but I mean like
- the actual air itself is dry. The moisture is very low. So that also affects the instruments hard to
- reverberate more. But yeah, you just got to find a way to, you know, make it work basically. Any other question?
- It's a very beautiful audience, but they're very shy. Okay, I have a question for you. Okay, I'm ready.
- How was your experience working with the BSO? Oh, it was awful. I mean, they were so rude, mean. I was
- crying after the first rehearsal.
- I couldn't even start my car. Yeah, that's right. I saw you crying. Oh, it was wonderful. I mean, we
- showed up at this beautiful little bungalow that you guys procured for us, and this lovely gift basket.
- And they knew that my daughters were coming, so there's children's books in there and all these sort
- of things. It was wonderful. My wife was just elated that the orchestra had omotenashi, that true hospitality.
- And of course, in working with all the musicians, you would never think that this is just some community
- orchestra. They sound really great. You've got really great players. It was very easy to work with everybody.
- They're very responsive. They listen well. You've trained them well. You've trained them well. I didn't
- do anything. Yeah. Well, thank you. But I saw that you have a bunch of snacks underneath your stand.
- Do you give them snacks when they do good? Do I?
- They should know. Something must be in the water. Well, I guess we go out after the rehearsal sometimes.
- That's a good snack. Are you paying for everybody? Any other questions before we close off?
- Okay, so the question is if somebody coming from the Western world would be easier for a flutist or
- a clarinetist, and it's equally difficult. The embouchure that we have for this instrument, it's just
- a gigantic hole, so it's more like a rim-blown flute than it is anything else. So the technique and
- the embouchure, for more wind players, they try to curve in and go blow into the flute, where we're
- blowing over
- kind of like over a beer bottle. That's the same kind of technique that we are using for making the
- sound. So it's just such a different approach. I don't think that there's, you know, there's an advantage
- when you come from any other instrument. Already. Well,
- Thank you again, Sean, for coming here for a talk. And thank you all for stopping by a little earlier.
- And I'm really excited to share Autumn Wind with Sean and introduce a little bit of a snapshot of my
- country. So thank you again. Thank you for having me.
- Great to see you all. My name is Ryo Hasegawa. I'm the music director of the BSO, who is very, very,
- very happy that finally spring is here in Bloomington. You know, one of the essential items for me to
- survive through winter here in Bloomington is this weighted blanket. I cannot sleep without it during
- the winter. But in the past couple of days, I don't need it anymore, which tells me that spring is here.
- I believe tonight's program has pretty much everything that BSO has to offer to the community of Bloomington.
- And it's special for me too, particularly because I get to share a little bit of my musical roots as
- a part of this program. And then my hope is that by the time when you get out of the concert hall, there's
- something that will stay in the rest of your musical life. So to start off this,
- unique program. We are very excited to share the extraordinary talent. The BSO's concerto competition
- winner, Ella Hightower, will play this fearless, energetic, devotional violin concerto movement number
- one. So please give a warm welcome to Ella on the stage for her BSO debut.
- next piece. You know many of us probably had had an experience of suddenly travel back in time to a
- very specific moment of our lives and it might be something you know from yesterday or from last year
- from five years ago ten years ago even sixty years ago but it's often triggered by something very small
- you know certain smell or certain scenery just you just happen to see or certain words that people say certain
- piece of music or even certain wind that certain way that wind moves through the air. And when that
- happens, it's almost like a time travel. And it usually comes unexpectedly. And those moments sort of
- show us a small snapshot of your previous life. And those moments are typically very quiet and simple
- and beautiful.
- So several moments in the piece that you're about to hear bring back to me something very personal,
- yet very ordinary moment that I shared with my grandfather when I was six years old. And I'm really
- grateful and humbled to be able to share that personal moment with you and with VSO and with my friend,
- soloist Sean Tyrew Head.
- Sean is a meiyoshi han, which is this highest rank, honorary rank of this tradition of shakuhachi, the
- bamboo flute. He and I met maybe several years ago. We worked on a few projects together since then,
- and this is my privilege to make music with him for the first time. And he's actually my own shakuhachi
- teacher as well.
- So I'm going to introduce him and bring him on stage and have him talk about the piece and instruments
- a little bit. So without further ado, please welcome Sean Tyrehead.
- Wow, Biola, you didn't tell me the audience was going to be this beautiful. Thank you so much for having
- me here. It's such a wonderful pleasure to share the traditional Japanese music as well as new compositions
- for the shakuhachi and of course to be with my friend here, Biola, with this awesome theater and wonderful
- musicians. It's just a great pleasure in general.
- I can answer it for you if you'd like. It's good that it's now instead of the silence. The piece that
- we're about to hear, Autumn Wind, is not like most of the pieces that you probably have heard before.
- It's not going to be filled with Western style harmonies of major and minor. You might not even have
- a recognizable melody that you'll be able to take home with you. But what you will get is
- the unadulterated sound of nature interpreted through instruments. Such sounds would be a sound as like
- the overpressure effect on the violin. And I was wondering if I could ask you to give us that overpressure
- effect. Ah yes, the language of my people. Now that might just sound like noise to you, but what I hear
- is I hear the creaking oak in nature.
- And if I hear the brass players give us that shush, can we get a little bit of the shush? That's not
- them telling me to be quiet. That is the wind effect. And those are sort of the sounds that you're going
- to hear. So you could try to find a melody. And there certainly are melodic fragments that are throughout
- the piece, but that's not the point of the piece. The point of the piece, rather, is that the orchestra
- is going to give us the sound
- the sound of nature in the shakuhachi will give you the sound of man's voice, praying and thanking God
- for creation and how beautiful things are, and also asking for help when nature seems to fight back.
- And so I hope that you enjoy this wonderful experience of sound and tone and color by Toshio Hosokawa,
- Autumn Wind.
- Truly, that was like the best we've ever played it. That was amazing, guys. Seriously, that was so good.
- I still got goosebumps. So now for something very different. I arranged a children's song for a little
- encore. So this is a piece called Nanatsu no Ko, which means seven little children. I guess this is
- like a Freudian thing that I want seven children. I have three right now.
- I'll have to convince my wife later. But it's a beautiful little tune, and I just would love to share
- that with you all for the love that I have for my children, love that I have for playing this instrument,
- and the new love I have for Bloomington.
- So the piece that you just heard is called Flower of Mandala. It's based on the Buddhist story. It's
- a tone poem composed by Kosaku Yamada. Yamada was one of the first Japanese composers who studied abroad
- in Europe to learn European music. And he brought back European tradition to Japan, and he had a huge
- impact on Japanese music after Meiji restoration.
- And he was largely influenced by music of Richard Strauss when he was studying in Germany. So you probably
- heard some of the, you know, hint of Strauss music, and that's one of the reasons why I paired these
- Japanese masters with Strauss tonight for this program, because there's so many connections philosophically,
- musically. Yeah, so next,
- Two songs that we're going to present are the songs by Richard Strauss. First one is Alice Ellen by
- metal soprano Daniel Long, and that is followed by Morgan, sung by soprano C.E. Young. So hope you enjoy
- it. So please welcome Daniel Long on the stage.
- of tonight's program. We are once going back to Richard Strauss music and with the scenes from their
- Rose and Cavalier. At the heart of this opera is almost like a meditation on time. How people grow,
- how love changes, and how sometimes the most generous act is simply to let someone go.
- So we're doing two scenes tonight, one, and it's both sort of the beginning and the ending of this emotional
- journey. We're gonna do first the presentation of Rose, this duet, where the young couples meet for
- the first time, and that is followed by the closing trio, where the three voices intertwine with each
- other in the
- in the most transcending ending in all opera, in my opinion. So, yes, let's do the presentation of Ross
- and let's welcome back Daniel Long and C.E. Young.
- This is like a dream for Conductor to be able to do this Strauss music with fantastic singers. So I'm
- absolutely all. So before we do the very, very last final trio, I'd like to thank our partner for this
- concert tonight, Asian Culture Center, for bringing Sean to this concert and Sean to Bloomington. And
- I would also like to thank BSO musicians for your willingness to explore this program
- and with a bit of my personal musical roots, and I'm really grateful for your openness. And of course,
- I would like to thank you all for coming here tonight. And as you saw, there's a lot that BSO can offer
- to the Bloomington, and I would really love for you to consider being a part of this journey, a part
- of our family, through simply just donating for us to thrive,
- Or you can play in the orchestra. Yes, you can. Or you can tell your friends and family about our upcoming
- concert on May 16th, featuring 100-plus singers on our chorus on Beethoven's monumental Ninth Symphony.
- Yeah, you don't want to miss that. And it's going to be at Musical Arts at IU Mac.
- So again, thank you again so much for coming and letting us share music tonight. Let me introduce one
- more additional soprano playing, singing the role of Marshaline, Rachel Spodek.