Jun Kawasaki

Compose, Director, Doublebass

A Japanese contrabass player and composer, Kawasaki is highly esteemed especially in his improvisational performance which is seemingly scooped out of his inner self.

Born in Tokyo, 1975, he studied contrabass under Tetsu Saito and Motoharu Yoshizawa while in university. He has performed with many distinguished musicians in and out of Japan.

Kawasaki has also composed and performed extensively for theater ,dance and Buto  about 50 pieces. His major works include music for Camille Claudel, Kenji Miyazawa and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (a dance piece conceived and choreographed by Senrei Nishikawa, a traditional Japanese dancer), About 1hr. 20min. on Oct. 1&2 in Brecht Festival (Japanese theatre company, Port B), Hamlet Machine (Heiner Müller) by Adults and Children (produced by SPAC Shizuoka Performing Arts Center in Japan), Madam Edwarda(George Bataille by Japanese traditional Marionette Theater Edo Ito Ayatsuri). He is also a music director for a unique theatre company, Futsu Gekijo (Ordinaly theater) in Tokyo. He has made many theater musics especially about Bertort Brecht, Samuel Becket and Garcia Lorca. He started Brecht and Lorca project since 2012.

2012, 2013 Kawasaki collaborated with Turkish choreographer Aydin Teker, and made "db-ll-bass — sound, body, and instrument" db-ll-bass is an attempt to construct a new creative sphere of performance, by reexamining the historical relationship between the body and a musical instrument — the contrabass — and extending both performance possibilities to the other. The piece was premiered in Istanbul, Turkey(Akbank Jazz festival), in October 2012. 2013 was played in Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama.

With a deep interest in words, 2010, he made and directed a poetry performance piece "suna no butai" in Moscow with Vradimir Volkov (contrabass) and some musician and dancer. And in Tokyo,he made new theater piece "into sogohmon sogohmonian (about Russian poet Osip Mandelstam and Armenian composer Komitas Vardaped)" with Sergey Letov, the most important Russian avant-garde jazz saxophone player.

Kawasaki has conducted for many years a series of seminars ,work shops and concerts involving poetry readings and music. He is teaching in university performance as a director to make theatrical  pieces about Japanese poets and poets of Brecht and so on.

Apart from solo activities, Kawasaki has participated in different groups in Japan, such as Maria Kannon (a legendary hardcore progressive rock group), experimental music group "DATA"

As a improviser ,collaborated with Tristan Honsinger, Sergey Letov, Saadet Türköz, Frank Grotowski, Tatusya Nakatani, Ab Baars, Yoshisaburo Toyozumi, EXIAS-J (a well-known experimental improvisational group), and so on.

Kawasaki has performed in many countries of the world and music and dance festival, including the US, Russia, France, Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania. He was also a member of Sound Migration, a collaborative music piece between Japan and Turkey (Şevket Akıncı and Saadet Türköz from Turkey) which was premiered in Istanbul at the International Contemporary Dance & Performance Festival (iDANS) in 2010 then toured in Egypt, Hungry, and Japan.

He has released solo CDs: Jun Kawasaki: "Left Bank, Right Bank" and "biologia (2013)"