DUET ” Ballad in the Land of the Rising Sun "
with Fumie HIHARA, koto, shamisen, voice
Classical, popular traditions and modern music
Fumie HIHARA and Véronique PIRON present a programm in duet on Japanese music, as much the classical and popular traditions as the modern ones, specific to their respective instruments: the koto (a 13 strings zither), the shamisen (a 3 strings lute) which accompany the voice and the bamboo flutes (shakuhachi and shinobue).
They first have been produced together at the International Contemporary Music Festival Ars Musica in Brussels in 2012, they played then in l’Auditori in Barcelona, in "salle Ropartz" in Rennes (France), etc. They have been invited by Patrick Campistron, chronicler, to record and make the arrangements of a collection of Japanese lullabies and children songs: CD ”Impressions Japonaises” 2018, and Fumie Hihara has been invited on CD ”Sillage” 2015 in the duet with the pianist Lydia Domancich.
Fumie HIHARA has the asset to share her life between France, her adoption country, and Japan, her native country, between Paris and Tôkyô: to be able to present her own culture while coming back to the roots, to be able to develop creative projects with a free feeling, and collecting new ideas here and there. With a solid background, she is a musician from the tradition (Yamada style) with a master licence at the age of 17, and graduated from the University of Fine Arts and Music of Tôkyô in 1998. Fumie Hihara is also a composer, and in a very open mind she works on experimental projects and new pieces with composers as much in Europe as in Japan: Festival d'Avignon, Opera-house in Lyon, Maison de l'Unesco, Guimet Museum in Paris, etc.
