N.K.

Teaching breath control and meditation. This course is not limited to musicians but is open for All. It does not concentrate on teaching musical ideas but is more about philosophy and human touch & feeling.
Improvisation key to Japanese culture, No theatre, Kabuki theatre, traditional drums festival and local farmer’s song.
Shoji Hano will not teach No or Kabuki,but more about Japanese culture.
Teaching about Budo, force or energy…..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdizIPzfZjk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhf1DYOY4I

Interview with Shoji Hano

Q: Which musicians did you most look up to when you started out as a drummer?
A: Max Roach, Art Blakey and Ringo Star are the ones come up in my mind. Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers’ “Caravan” was one of my favourite songs. Max Roach playing with Clifford Brown in their quintet was really excellent for me at the time. Ringo Star’s phrasing on the Abbey Road influenced me too.
Q: How has Shintaido influenced your drum style? You seem to move ingraceful, efficient circles rather than the rigidup-and-down movements of most drummers. What similarities exist between drumming and martial arts?
A: I used to meditate as Shintaido taught me to. There are complex entities to be understood. I don’t practice Shintaido any more so I can’t really talk about how it directly relates to my current drumming. One thing I feel certain about is that the sheer fact that I trained like there was absolutely nothing else to do for five years from1985 to 1989, which excludes my introductory period to Shintaido that commenced in 1975. This kind of focus and commitment, I think, will teach you something no matter what the subject is. It’s not as simplistic as that you learn Shintaido and you will know someting about my drumming.
The sense of circle is as logical as how the drum kits are set up. They are set up in a somewhat circular shape. I need to use my whole body and its weight to hit the drums straight because of my small body size. I have to make the connection between the drums and my body for every single attack I make. Hence how I move when I am drumming comes naturally in how you see it.
Q: Physical fitness and economy of movement is obviously very important for a drummer, especially as you get older, how does the physical discipline of a martial art help you to play?
A: Body needs to be in a sufficient shape in order to play clearly.
Q: You play with a jazz grip on your left hand, and a modern grip on your right. What is the reasoning behind this?
A: It’s probably the fact that I started out drumming wanting to play Jazz and lots of Jazz drummers played this way. Later Ifound that there were important things about the inequality of the four limbs. Many people try so hard to make the rhythms and the sounds in perfect synchronization by the two hands and two legs, which I believe to be impossible. The trad-grip of the left hand allows for the cutting sound rather than of continuous sounds of the right hand. Our bodies aren’t symmetrical and I am interested in these differences.
Q: Your music features beautiful cascading rolls, do you think people underestimate the expressive, textual potential of drums?
A: Philly Joe Jones influenced me for his rolls. When I decided that I wanted to express my sense of breath and looked for the tools within drumming, it was the rolls that I believed appropriate for its sustaining nature.
Q: You drummed for psychedelic rockers High Rise (those guys are crazy!), what did you learn from the experience? It seems very different from your style up until that point.
A: I was interested in trying to hear what comes out in the combination of my drumming and the Rock n Roll context. Mitch Mitchell, the drummer of Jimi Hendrix, was favorite at the time. I wanted to try out what I could offer to that kind of sound. It was a good thing to do.
Q: As a very free-form musician, what is your practice regime like? Has it intensified or slackened over the years as your skills have increased?
A: My practice is to refine myself as a human being. Being in love, do things that are not making much money at all etc. It’s not just about the drum kit, which is important for me to be able to control it. Practising for the sake of practicing is not as important as delivering sounds that are reachable to people. So every time I make sounds, I do it with as much concentration as I can give whether there is audience with me or not.
Q: As someone who has traveled between Japan, Europe and the US for many years, do you find certain regions produce musicians with a particular style?
A: YES! There are so many things I can say about other people. I visited Russia in 1994 to play in a festival. I collaborated with a saxophonist called Chekas in (I don’t know the correct spelling of his name), who was really into creating a theatrical narratives within improvisation. Their sense of time is very different. American improvisers are heavily based on Jazz to my ears. FMP and ICP of Europe have mixed feelings of wanting Jazz and rejecting Jazz. Drummers in America
Q: What advice would you give to young drummers inspired by your experimental playing?
A: Stop thinking too much and just project direct and honest sounds to your best capacity.
Q: You’re seen a great deal of music in your time,what excites you these these days? And where to you think Jazz will go as a genre in the future?
A: Not much music is exciting for me these days. I don’t know anything about what Jazz means and entails for younger generations these days. I recently met young Jazz students of Julliard in NewYork. I had no idea about who they were talking about as their favorite Jazz musicians and they had no idea about who Albert Ayler was. All I know is that there certainly is a separate stream of “Jazz” from what I know as Jazz. I have no idea as to where Jazz goes from this point onwards. The word it self will always be there, I guess.
Bonus Question: If you could play another instruments well as you can play the drums, what would it be and why?
A: Just drums I think.

Schedule for Workshop: Tuesday 12/10/2010 18:00-22:00

Workshop Location: @ NK Elsenstr. 52 2HH 2Etage 12059 Berlin

Participation is limited to 12 participants.

Registration: Pre-registration is required and can be done by sending an email to info@nkprojekt.de

Fee: 25€