Chieko Mori – New School Koto
A few of you may already know the name Chieko Mori if you follow either John Zorn’s Tzadik releases or, more likely, the recent James Blackshaw curated “The Garden of Forking Paths” compilation on Important Records.
What’s especially interesting to me, as a koto player, is the extremely small community of non-traditional players in existence considering how versatile the instrument is. Including Mori-san, I can count maybe 3 or 4. Brett Larner is another, having released some recordings through the stellar Improvised Music from Japan label.
Sprial Wave off The Garden of Forking Paths comp.
Chieko’s MySpace page.
i am in the fortunate position of not having constricted my koto listening with the conventional boundaries erected by tradition
Kanoko Nishi is a local (Oakland) young experimental koto player. I think she is a recent Mills graduate. I have seen her a couple of times in improv ensembles at 21 Grand and other local spaces.
Yeah I’ve heard of her. Haven’t seen her band “Slow Children At Play”(?) before. Tried contacting her once but didn’t get a reply. I play as well and wanted to set up a show or something…