In partnership with East-West Center Arts Program, an evening of conversation and performance with Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, Lorraine Minatoishi, and Kevin Nute about the connections between Japanese architecture and music.  

The Japanese term “ma”（間）refers to a pause in either space or time. It is a concept integral to the understanding of both Japanese visual and performance art.

 

Christopher Yohmei Blasdel began the shakuhachi and studies of Japanese music in 1972 with Goro Yamaguchi.  In 1982 he received an MFA in ethnomusicology from Tokyo University of Fine Arts and received his professional name “Yohmei” from Yamaguchi in 1984. Performing in Japan and around the world, Blasdel is one of the foremost world performers and educators in shakuhachi and Japanese music.  His playing maintains a balance between traditional shakuhachi music, modern compositions and cross-genre work with musicians, dancers, poets and visual artists. 
 
Lorraine Minatoishi is the president of AEPAC, an award-winning architecture and engineering firm specializing in historic preservation. Educated at Waseda University in Tokyo, graduating with a Ph.D. in Engineering in 1999, she produced an award-winning documentary, Aloha Buddha in 2011, which covered the history of Japanese immigration, religion and architecture in the Hawaiian Islands.
 
Kevin Nute teaches architecture at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa. He received his architectural training at the University of Nottingham before working in practice in London, Hong Kong and Singapore and earning his PhD at the University of Cambridge. Kevin ​spent his early career in Japan, first as a visiting research scholar at the University of Tokyo and later as an associate professor at Muroran Institute of Technology. He is the author of Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (2000), Place, Time and Being in Japanese Architecture (2004), Naturally Animated Architecture (2018)​​, This Here​ Now (2020), and most recently, The Constructed Other: Japanese Architecture in the Western Mind (2021).

 

Many thanks to our speakers, partners and volunteers for making this program possible! We couldn’t do it without you! Honolulu Beerworks for providing Kewalo’s Cream Ale, Souther Glazer’s Wine and Spirits for providing wine, proseco and the expert bartending of Christian Self, Pua Hana for the beautiful lei, SHADE Institute for volunteers, and Ray Tabata for photography.