Gagaku Enchants Audiences at Disney Hall
Cultural News, November 2004
Sukeyasu Shiba, Founder and Music Director of Reigakusha Gagaku Ensemble in Tokyo. (Photo courtesy of Reigakusha)
By Fumie Iida
“Gagaku is really beautiful. That sound is really unusual and I can go to a meditative state,” Brigitte Heichelbech, a painter from France, said.
“It’s very good and beautiful to watch. It’s not something you hear every day. It’s dense in a lot of ways. It’s emotional and it’s precise,” said British artist Temisan Okpaku, “No other country can do this. Gagaku is a treasure.”
Every single audience member who was at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2004, must have thanked the hall’s designer and architect Frank Gehry for his dream to have a gagaku concert in the hall. Reigakusha Gagaku Ensemble, a group that plays Japan’s oldest performing art known as gagaku, made that dream a reality with a one-time performance that evening.
The hall was filled with an audience of 1,450 people, each attentively inclining forward to listen to Japan’s, and arguably the world’s, oldest form of music, which has a history of more than one thousand years.
“I’m very pleased that we had such a large audience in the United States and I’m also so happy that people enjoyed our performance,” Sukeyasu Shiba, founder and music director of Reigakusha Gagaku Ensemble, said with an excited voice after the performance.
Between the performances, Robert Garfias, professor of anthropology at UC Irvine and foremost expert of gagaku study in the United States, explained gagaku to the audience. Garfias said that gagaku was “music for the entertainment of the court nobles. Gagaku has a great refinement and is very slow, graceful, powerful and expressive music.”
After the first part of the concert, Garfias appeared on stage with Gehry. Instantaneously, the hall was filled with overwhelming cheer and applause to welcome Gehry.
“I had a dream of it (gagaku) being performed in this hall,” Gehry said. Gehry took gagaku lessons at a UCLA class taught by Garfias when he was an architecture student at USC about 40 years ago. He said he was inspired by Japanese traditional architecture at first. Then, he became absorbed in Japanese arts, especially gagaku. Gehry said that Gagaku was in his mind when he designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
As ancient musical instruments created a sensuous melody, the audience was enchanted by the sound handed down from century to century.
The audience shared in the moment that Garfias called “the chance to go back to the twelfth century. The chance to go back to a different sense of time.”
The 29 musicians played traditional instruments. String instruments included the wagon (lute) and so (Japanese harp); wind instruments included the sho (mouth organ), hichiriki (oboe), and ryuteki (flute); the percussion section included the kakko (drum), taiko (drum), shoko (bronze gong) and san-no-tsuzumi (hour-glass drum).
Most of the musicians were formerly Shiba’s students 20 years ago at Tokyo National University of the Arts & Music and Kunitachi College of Music.
“They really love gagaku and gathered by empathizing with the concept of Reigakusha,” Shiba said.
Reigakusha was established in 1985 by Shiba to study, perform and advance the ancient art of gagaku. Shiba retired from his position at the Imperial Household Agency just before he turned 50.
“Since I was one of the public officials, I couldn’t do what I wanted to do in there,” Shiba said.
Reigakusha has been highly acclaimed for its performances of the traditional gagaku repertoires, its revival of classic works, its reproductions of ancient instruments and its commissioning of new works by leading Japanese composers. Reigakusha has extended its stage to include performances in the United States and Europe, as well as in Japan.
The concert opened with Kangen (instrumental music). When the musicians with traditional gagaku costumes solemnly appeared one after another on the green square carpet on the stage, the hall fell into complete silence. The audience was staring at this rare, unfamiliar pre-performance “ceremony,” holding their breath.
After the short piece “Hyojyo no Netori,” the most famous gagaku number, “Etenraku” was performed. “Etenraku” is often heard in weddings and festivals at temples and shrines in Japan.
The second part was Bugaku (dance and music) “Ranryo-o.” Dancer Katsuyuki Kobayashi, wearing a golden dragon mask and orange costume, performed an enigmatic dance in the center of the stage. He moved back and fourth, right and left with slow, formal steps.
As the finale, Reigakusha featured “Shuteiga Ichigu (In an Autumn Garden),” created by renowned composer Toru Takemitsu. The music sounded intense and quiet, or even completely silent at times. Floating in the collage of enchanting sounds, the audience felt an aesthetic sense of Japan.
“Shuteiga is very profound music; therefore, it’s difficult to understand,” Shiba said, “and I’m really happy that the audience liked this deep Shuteiga.”
The Reigakusha Gagaku Ensemble concert on Oct. 12, 2004 at Walt Disney Concert Hall was part of a world music program by Los Angeles Philharmonic. The concert was generously sponsored by Mr. George Aratani, Dr. Paul Terasaki and the Consulate General of Japan in Los Angeles.
Fumie Iida is a freelance writer. After graduating from Waseda University, she worked at an advertising agency in Tokyo for five years. She was a staff writer, photographer and assistant sports editor of the El Camino College newspaper Union. She came to the United States in 2002 to study American journalism and public relations.