Kyo-Shin-An Arts Presents SPRING GREEN, March 10

From groundbreaking to mainstream, over the last decade KSA has built and promoted a wide body of new classical repertoire combining Japanese and Western instruments.

Commissions to date total 29 composers for 49 new works.

The 10th Anniversary Season continues on March 10 with SPRING GREEN, a program featuring Hub New Music: Michael Avitabile, flute; David Dziardziel, clarinet; Alyssa Wang, violin; and Jesse Christeson, cello; with James Nyoraku Schlefer, shakuhachi.

This exciting, young quartet brings their own commissions with shakuhachi to KSA. Quintets by Chad Cannon, Takuma Itoh, Sun-Young Park, and Angel Lam (KSA co-commission), plus quartets by Pascal Le Boeuf and Yevgeniy Sharlat.

Sunday, March 10, 2019 at 4:00 PM, Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A West 13 Street, Manhattan. TICKETS: $25 general audiences and $15 students and seniors. In advance at brownpapertickets.com.

HUB NEW MUSIC ( Michael Avitabile, flute; David Dziardziel, clarinet; Alyssa Wang, violin; and Jesse Christeson, cello) With its unique instrumentation of flute, clarinet, violin, and cello, Hub New Music celebrates the fluidity and diversity of voices in today's classical music landscape It has championed the works of leading contemporary composers including Mason Bates, Matthew Aucoin, Anna Clyne, Kati Ag cs, Nico Muhly, Robert Honstein, Laura Kaminsky, Angel Lam, and more. Highlights for the 2018/19 season include festival appearances at the MidAmerican Center for Contemporary Music Festival (Bowling Green, OH), Sacramento State Festival of New American Music, Blue Sage Arts Center Modern Music Festival (Paonia, CO), and Connecticut Summerfest (Hartford, CT). Fueled by the spirit of collaboration, Hub's large-scale projects feature Matsuri, an evening length collaboration with shakuhachi; a 25 minute collaborative work with the renowned composer/harpist Hannah Lash (spring 2020); a concert-length song-cycle with composer/performer collective Oracle Hysterical entitled Frontier Journals (2020-21); and a choreographed production of its Soul House program presented with Urbanity Dance and the Peabody Essex Museum

. www.hubnewmusic.org

JAMES NYORAKU SCHLEFER, SHAKUHACHI, is a Grand Master of the shakuhachi and one of only a handful of non-Japanese artists to have achieved this rank. He received the Dai-Shi-Han (Grand Master) certificate in 2001, and his second Shi-Han certificate in 2008, from the Mujuan Dojo in Kyoto. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Tanglewood and BAM, as well as multiple venues across the country and in Japan, Indonesia, Brazil and Europe. Schlefer first encountered the shakuhachi in 1979, while working towards a career as a flute player and pursuing an advanced degree in musicology. Today he is considered by his colleagues to be one of most influential Western practitioners of this distinctive art form. Known to his students as Nyoraku sensei, Schlefer established his own dojo in NYC in 1996. He also teaches shakuhachi at Columbia University, a broad spectrum of Western and World music courses at New York City College of Technology (CUNY), and performs and lectures at colleges and universities throughout the United States. As a composer, Schlefer has written multiple chamber and orchestral works combining Japanese and Western instruments as well as numerous pieces solely for traditional Japanese instruments. In December 2015, he was recognized by Musical America Worldwide as one of their 30 Top Professionals and Key Influencers for his work both as a composer and Artistic Director of Kyo-Shin-An Arts. His writings about the shakuhachi and his career were published in 2018 on NewMusicBox and he was profiled by the National Endowment for the Arts' Arts Works Blog in May 2016. His programming for Kyo-Shin-An Arts has also been recognized with two CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming (2013 and 2016). His orchestral music can be heard on the recording Spring Sounds Spring Season MSR Classics. www.nyoraku.com

KYO-SHIN-AN ARTS: Kyo-Shin-An Arts' is a contemporary music organization with a mission to commission music and present concerts that bring Japanese instruments specifically koto, shakuhachi and shamisen to Western classical music. A 2016 and 2013 CMA/ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award winner (small presenter, mixed repertory), Kyo-Shin-An Arts will be presenting its 10h chamber music season at the Tenri Cultural Institute. KSA works in partnership with established ensembles and Western soloists, bridging two cultures by introducing composers and players alike to the range and virtuosity of Japanese instruments and the musicians who play them. The resulting music provides audiences with a unique introduction to traditional Japanese music within a familiar context and fabulous contemporary music. Concerts feature a blend of KSA commissions with World, American and NY premieres, traditional and contemporary music for Japanese instruments and Western repertoire. Current ensemble partners include the Cassatt and Voxare String Quartets in NYC, the Arianna and Ciompi in MO and NC, Ensemble Epomeo, Sybarite5, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra and Orchestra of the Swan in the UK. Players of Japanese instruments include Christopher Yohmei Blaisdel, Masayo Ishigure, Yoko Reikano Kimura, Nami Kineie, Yumi Kurosawa, Riley Lee, John Kaizan Neptune, Yoko Nishi, Akihito Obama and James Nyoraku Schlefer. Commissioned composers to date include Victoria Bond, Chad Cannon, Ciara Cornelius, Douglas j Cuomo, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Daron Hagen, Matthew Harris, William Healy, Kento Iwasaki, Mari Kimura, Angel Lam, Daniel Levitan, Gilda Lyons, James Matheson, Paul Moravec, Mark Nowakowski, Yoko Sato, Somei Satoh, James Nyoraku Schlefer, Benjamin Verdery, Aleksandra Vrebalov and Randall Woolf, among others. www.kyoshinan.org

TENRI CULTURAL INSTITUTE AND KYO-SHIN-AN ARTS PRESENT: The excellent acoustics and intimate gallery setting of the Tenri Cultural Institute create a superb setting for listening to chamber music and offer audiences the rare opportunity to hear both traditional and contemporary music from two cultures in a setting similar to the music rooms of the courts and castles of both Europe and Japan. Over 300 years of chamber music tradition are presented throughout this series. Performances feature piano trios and string quartets from the great composers of Europe, music from Japan's Edo period written for shamisen, koto and shakuhachi and contemporary music combining Western and Japanese instruments. http://artsat.tenri.org/