Biwa (Kimura trio)
2017 R&D, Tokyo 2018 (world premiere)
Kumiko Shuto completed her undergraduate at the Tokyo College of Music and studied satsuma biwa with Yukio Tanaka. She graduated top of the 43rd NHK Performers of Japanese Music Training Program and passed the subsequent NHK Japanese Music audition. Shuto was awarded first place in the 39th Japan Biwa Music Contest, winning The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Prize and the NHK Award.
Shuto has performed Toru Takemitsu’s “November Steps” for biwa, shakuhachi and orchestra with the Sagamihara Chamber Music Ensemble conducted by Hiroyuki Iwaki, the Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Masahiko Enkoji, the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kazushi Ono, the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre national de Lyon conducted by Eivind Gullberg Jensen, the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra conducted by Junichi Hirokami and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marko Ivanović. Other notable performances include on NHK TV’s “Japanese Music Moments” and “Performing Arts on the Flower Stage”, the 24th “Japanese Music and Dance of Tomorrow” concert produced by the National Theatre of Japan and the 162nd “Biwa Assembly”. Shuto has performed internationally numerous times, including in the Suntory Hall’s production of composer and conductor Yoshihiro Kanno’s “Memories of the Sun Goddess Himiko” at the Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore.
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“There is a sense of breathing and space. The work’s world is rooted in human lives interweaving through three-dimensional space, experiencing madness and sensuality.”