Sankyoku Trio Performs Classical Japanese Music Tuesday Night

April 3, 2005

April 3, 2005, Greencastle, Ind. - Three masters of traditional Japanese ensemble music will perform at DePauw University’s Thompson Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m. The members of the Sankyoku Trio, as they are called, are Motoshige Kai, Yoko Hiraoka, and David Wheeler. The concert is free and open to the public.

At DePauw, the Trio will perform on several traditional instruments, including the biwa (lute), the koto (a 13-string zither or floor harp), the shamisen (a 3-string banjo-like lute), and the shakuhachi (5-holed bamboo flute, seen below). Yoko Hiraoka and Motoshige Kai also sing in the classical style.

Motoshige Kai has been performing professionally for three decades. He is also a major Osaka teacher of the Tea Ceremony and this aspect sometimes appears as part of his stage appearance. Motoshige Kai is one of the very few remaining masters of 'Heikyoku' biwa (recitations from the Tale of Heike) and he studied shamisen with National Living Treasure, Seikin Tomiyama and kokyu with Mitsue Yokoi. Since 1989, Kai has toured extensively in Japan and abroad including Holland, Germany, Australia, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates and France.

Yoko Hiraoka is a master of the classical music of Japan. A native of Kyoto Japan, and now a resident of the United States, her playing career spans thirty years and her musical performance encompasses traditional, modern and avant-garde compositions, including microtonal music. Hiraoka is from the Jiuta tradition and plays the classical Japanese chamber music repertoire from the 17th century onwards, with the instruments koto, shamisen and singing voice. She also plays a wide variety of Japanese twentieth century and contemporary compositions.

A shakuhachi player and musicologist, David Wheeler has studied and performed the shakuhachi in Japan for over twenty years, beginning his tutelage in Tokyo in 1977 with renowned master Junsuke Kawase III, head of the Chikuyu-sha school of Kinko Style of classical shakuhachi performance. David received his M.A. in musicology from Tokyo University of Fine Arts in 1985. He has benefited from studying and playing with the majority of the great Kinko masters of the latter half of the 20th century. Wheeler's professional career started in Tokyo, and has since taken him all over Japan and around the world.