GLENN GOULD
GATHERING
Curated by
RYUICHI SAKAMOTO
Artist at Sogetsu hall
Carsten Nicolai
aka Alva Noto
Born in Karl-Marx-Stadt, 1965.
Carsten Nicolai is one of the most renowned artists working at the intersection of art and science and is infamous for his minimalist approach. He is part of an artist generation who works intensively in the transitional area between music, art and science. In his work as a visual artist Nicolai seeks to overcome the separation of the sensory perceptions of man by making scientific phenomenons like sound and light frequencies perceivable for both eyes and ears. His installations have a minimalistic aesthetic that by its elegance and consistency is highly intriguing. After his participation in important international exhibitions like documenta X and the 49th and 50th Venice Biennale, Nicolai’s works were shown worldwide in extensive solo and group exhibitions.His artistic œuvre echoes in his musical outputs. Under the pseudonym Alva Noto he leads his sound experiments with a strong adherence to reductionism into the field of electronic music creating his own code of signs, acoustics and visual symbols. Diverse musical projects include remarkable collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ryoji Ikeda (cyclo), Blixa Bargeld or Mika Vainio. Nicolai toured extensively as Alva Noto through Europe, Asia, South America and the US. Among others, he performed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern in London. Nicolai co-scored the music for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film, 'The Revenant’ which has been nominated for a Golden Globe, BAFTA, Grammy and Critics Choice Award.
For GGG - Glenn Gould Gathering, Alva Noto collaborates for this very special event with german singer Carolin Gennburg aka Nilo(voice, humming).
Christian Fennesz

Born in Austria, 1962.
He is know from his own particular musical world as well as his impeccable work in creating beautiful compositions for guitar. Somewhere between concrete music, classical and ambience sounds, he stretches musical resources and effects to create melodies and atmospheres that fuse classical and orchestral concepts with conceptual musical research and complex digital structures. He has been recording and also performing with Ryuichi Sakamoto and playing live with Keith Rowe, Sparklehorse, Mike Patton and many others.
Fennesz and Sakamoto released a collaborative album entitled “cendre”: “Ryuichi Sakamoto and Christian Fennesz blend the unstructured and imaginative qualities of improvisation with the satisfying sculpture of composition. Sakamoto's piano, his style reminiscent of Debussy and Satie, perfectly complements Fennesz with his powerful blend of shimmering guitar and passionate electronics.” Fennesz’s guitar and laptop live set demonstrate why he remains one of the most engaging musicians using electronics. His treatment of the laptop and guitar allow each to give up its identity to the other, exquisite guitar washes loosing their specificity to the crackling textures of the laptop. Live guitar chords become loops on the laptop and he constantly shifts between contradictions and possibilities of each.
Francesco Tristano

Born in Luxenburg, 1981.
“Music is music”. This is what Alban Berg responded to George Gershwin in Paris during the spring of 1928, as to why there was no distinction between what we consider “educated” music and “popular” music. Francesco Tristano has endorsed this quote over the last decade with his work; combining piano and synthesizer, between the scores of Johann Sebastian Bach – and also Frescobaldi, Berio, Buxtehude, Stravinsky, and Gershwin, among others – and the latest production and sequencing tools.
Francesco Tristano is an artist of many talents: pianist, composer, techno and jazz musician, combining eras, genres and styles in his music. Francesco has become a key reference in a new movement which explores the creative intersection between classical and electronic music, homogenising it in a natural way which unites audiences from various worlds into his own universe. Tristano often collaborates with important names in different genres such as Derrick May, Carl Craig and Michel Portal to name a few.
Tristano has a growing discography. As of today he released 13 albums. His last work 'Piano Circle Songs' featuring Chilly Gonzales, marking his debut with Sony Classics in September 2017, is a recording which explores the gentler, more innocent side of his creative personality with simple, poignant melodies being the key creative impetus.

Artist at Sogetsu plaza
Loscil

Born in Canada, 1971.
Scott Morgan is a composer and multimedia artist living in Vancouver, BC. Morgan’s background in Vancouver’s independent music scene and academic composition studies at Simon Fraser University culminated in the creation of his loscil project in the late 1990’s. With loscil, Morgan explores the marriage of electronic and acoustic instrumentation to create “…stark landscapes that are evocative, earthly, anything but abstract, and so much more than merely ‘ambient’.” (The Quietus, UK). As loscil, Morgan has released numerous albums since 2001, culminating with his latest, Monument Builders. He has licensed and composed bespoke scores for film, dance and interactive media, including his own generative music application ADRIFT. Loscil has toured worldwide making appearances at esteemed festivals such as Mutek, Decibel, Le Guess Who and Big Ears. In 2015, Morgan partnered with Madison, Wisconsin cellist Mark Bridges to form the duo High Plains who released their inaugural album Cinderland early in 2017.

Talk guest
Akira Asada

Born in Hyogo, 1957. A professor of Art and Design Studies and director of Academic Research Center of the Graduate School at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. Since he publicized “Structure and Power - Beyond Semiotics” in 1983, he has been engaged in writing and critical activities in various areas such as economics, philosophy, history of thought, art, music, cinema, and literature. His publications also include A Theory of Escape: Adventures of Schizo Kids, The Music of Hermes, and The End of Cinema’s Century, dialogues such as “An Angel Passes”, “Beyond ‘The End of History’", and “Critical Point of the 20th Century Culture”, and magazines, “InterCommunication” and “Critical Space”.
Susumu Kunisaki

Born in 1963, he has worked as the chief editor of a magazine devoted to sound creators, “Sound & Recording Magazine”, for 20 years. He now works on a number of articles such as reports from production sites through interviews with musicians and engineers, and equipment knowledge.
In 2010, he began a live recording event, “Premium Studio Live” and has expanded his work through a labeling activity which streams recorded audio sources in High-Resolution format.

Talk guest
Junichi Miyazawa

Junichi Miyazawa, Ph.D., is an author, critic and professor at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo. His work covers music, literature and media, with a special focus on Glenn Gould. He is recognized as one of the world's leading Glenn Gould scholars. His Guren Gurudo ron (Glenn Gould: A Perspective, Tokyo, 2004) was awarded the Yoshida-Hidekazu-Sho, Japan's highest prize for music writing. Along with academic papers, Miyazawa has contributed numerous notes to Japanese releases of Glenn Gould’s CD’s and DVD’s, including two compilation albums of Ryuichi Sakamoto Selections. Miyazawa is also a prolific translator: he has translated into Japanese fifteen books from English and Russian, including literature by or about Glenn Gould, the materials of Andrey Tarkovsky’s film The Mirror, and Timothy Findley's novel The Wars. Another book he authored is Makuruhan no Kokei (McLuhan in-Sight, Tokyo, 2007).
Ichiro Yamaguchi (sakanaction)

Born in Otaru, Hokkaido in 1980.
Started his career in a five-member rock band, “sakanaction” in 2005 and made his major debut in 2007.
Writes and composes nearly all of their songs.
He performed at the 64th Kouhaku Utagassen and won the Best Music Award at the 39th Japan Academy Awards, where Sakanaction became the first rock band to receive this award.
Currently, projects such as his music support for “HAKUTO”, the only team from Japan competing in the moon exploration competition “Google Lunar XPRIZE,” have received high critical acclaim.
In addition, his progressive attitude toward “the way of the musician” has continued to gather attention. While collaborating with creators from various fields, in 2015 he started “NF” , an event where music and diverse cultures interact with one-another.

Curator
Ryuichi Sakamoto

Born in Tokyo 1952.
Made solo debut by “Thousand Knives” and formed YMO in 1978 and gives a active participation after YMO. Awarded British Academy Awards for “Merry Christmas, Mr.Lawrence”, Academy Award for Original Music Score (Composer) and Grammy Awards, etc. for the sound track of “The Last Emperor”. Attained world-wide high praise for his attitude with seeking innovative sound. Occasionally referred to issues for environment and peace, established a forest preservation entity called “more trees” and expressed a stance of abandoning nuclear generation through the activities such as “stop rokkasho” and “NO NUKES” and so on. He also supported victims of 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Further, assumed artistic director for the 10th anniversary project in Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) in 2013 and invited Sapporo International Art Festival 2014 as a guest director and acted aggressively in cross-border genre. In July 2014, his oropharyngeal cancer was disclosed, having medical treatment and recharge himself, after one year later, came back with cinema music works for “Nagasaki: Memories of My Son” directed by Yoji Yamada and “The Revenant” directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and worked for music on “Ikari” (Anger) directed by Sang-Il Li in 2016. In March 2017, released a solo album “async” after eight years.