Presented in partnership with Nova Arts!
Japanese sound artist, FUJI||||||||||TA performs GAGAKU, a slow and elegant form of 7th century classical music on a hand-built pipe organ. Experimental guitarist Bill Nace uses a sculptural approach incorporating tape loops, the taishōgoto and hurdy-gurdy.
Yosuke Fujita, also known as FUJI||||||||||TA is a Sound Artist, organist and composer based in Japan. Fujita’s artistic practice centers on the exploration, manipulation and presentation of sounds commonly found within nature, including the use of air, water and even the echolocation of bats. The crux of his performances is his hand-built pipe organ. An instrument, which Fujita based on the traditional Japanese musical concept of GAGAKU, a slow and elegant form of classical music found in the 7th century. The organ itself is built of 11 pipes and has no keys. It utilizes an air-pump, known as “fuigo”, which is modelled after a historic blacksmith’s own tools.The organ is reliant solely on the skill of its creator in order to produce a sound.
Bill Nace is an artist and musician based in Philadelphia, PA. He has collaborated with an extraordinary range of musicians, including Michael Morley, Graham Lambkin, Matt Krefting, Twig Harper, Jooklo Duo, chik white, John Truscinski, Thurston Moore, Jake Meginsky, Jessica Rylan, Paul Flaherty, Yoko Ono, Wally Shoup, Aaron Dilloway, and Kim Gordon, with whom he regularly plays as one half of the duo Body/Head. In 2020 Nace released the critically acclaimed solo record “BOTH” on Drag City. A collaboration with Gordon and Dilloway — “Body/Dilloway/Head” — is out now on Three Lobed Records and his newest solo LP Through a Room was released in November on Drag City.
“Nace approaches the guitar as an object to be explored as much as an instrument to be played. In addition to fingerpicking and strumming, he uses bits of wood or metal to generate a spectrum of tones that, with practice, he can manipulate with precision. With his inquisitive spirit and formidable skills, walls of distortion are decorated with filigree traceries of treble as if to guide the eye across a Brutalist facade.” -Pitchfork
