HANAKO NAKAMURA
BIOGRAPHY
Hanako NAKAMURA, Sho
Hanako Nakamura studied at the Kunitachi College of Music. She studied the shō withMayumi Miyata and Tadaaki Ōno, gakubiwa with Kahoru Nakamura and Gagakuensemble performance with Sukeyasu Shiba. She has been a member of the Reigakushaensemble since 2001 and in 2006 was a trainee in the program for upcoming artistssponsored by the Agency for Cultural Affairs.As a member of Reigakusha she has performed at the National Theatre in Tokyo, inoverseas concerts and at concerts for primary and junior high school pupils in Japan.Together with Hitomi Nakamura on hichiriki and Kanako Nakamura on ryūteki fluteshe formed the “Gagaku-zanmai Nakamura Sanchi” group, and with Remi Miura andKazue Tajima she formed the shō trio “Shogirls” with the aim of conveying theattractions of Gagaku.
She is finding more and more opportunity by the year to perform in collaboration withartists active in other genres and instruments other than those of the Gagaku ensemble.In 2011 she took part in a concert entitled Shō and Piano: Fusion of Images with thepianist Mari Asakawa and she has taken on the challenge of collaborating with visualimages created by leading visual artists such as Jun Kurumisawa, Yoshihito Nakanishiand Elaine Thomazi Freitas. In April 2015 she gave the first performance in China ofFumetsu no hikari （Undying Light） by Miyuki Itō at the Szechuan College of Music inChengdu, a work that she had premiered the previous year. In October 2015 she tookpart in a performance of the ballet Kaguyahime given by Les Grands Ballets Canadiensde Montréal in Canada together with Katsuhiko Tabuchi on hichiriki and Mami Tsunodaon ryūteki flute. This outstanding work in the genre of contemporary ballet combinedmusic by Maki Ishii featuring the three wind instruments of the Tōgaku ensemble （shō,hichiriki and ryūteki） with choreography by the great Jiří Kylián, and the musicprovoked a great deal of interest in Montréal. In December 2017 she organized andproduced a concert entitled Hanamiyabi featuring performers of shō, ryūteki, shamisenand koto. The program was a highly distinctive one consisting of both classical andcontemporary works including first performances, and succeeded in generating newpossibilities for Japanese traditional instruments. She travelled to Seoul in September2018 on the invitation of Ensemble TIMF, the Korean ensemble formed in 2001 that iscurrently one of the leading contemporary music ensembles active in Asia, andperformed Landscape V by Toshio Hosokawa and Breathing Tides by Dai Fujikura withmembers of TIMF. Hanako Nakamura is a shō performer whose future activities aremuch anticipated.