While struggling to find contemporary jazz venues in Osaka, I stumbled upon Studio T-Bone, a venue supporting both live jazz and photography and decided to visit. Pianist Yukari Sekiya 関谷 友加里 and percussionist Naoto Yamagishi 山㟁直人 やまぎしなおと were improvising together. While I didn’t manage to get to know them well on that occasion, I was delighted to spend time with the creative family members running the studio. A chance encounter months later unexpectedly brought Yukari back into my mind. When I reached out to her, she responded, and I’ve now learned what a deep and inspiring artist and person she is, opening the door to possible future collaborations. It was a powerful reminder that we can’t always see right away why our intuition speaks to us. Sometimes, it may be setting something in motion far in the future or for a purpose quite different from what we imagine.
KYOTOGRAPHIE KG+ Photographer Group “WOMB” (Masami Ueda, Rino Kawasaki, Kalina Leonard, Sana Kohmoto) 10th Anniversary Exhibition (April 26, 2024)
WOMB photographers Masami Ueda, Rino Kawasaki, Sana Kohmoto, and Kalina Leonard in front of the exhibit of WOMB magazines and photo books at their 10th anniversary exhibition at the Kyoto Museum of Photography I had circled the KYOTOGRAPHIE KG+ Photographer Group...
Asuca Hayashi 林明日香 — Song of the Earth, Tokyo (May 5, 2024)
On a sunny 5th of May — Children’s Day in Japan — I made my way to what seemed like an unlikely venue, Mifa Football Cafe, for a matinee child/family-friendly concert by the J-Pop singer Asuca Hayashi 林明日香. Mifa is located in Toyosu, which is one of a series of...
The Sound of Freedom: Pianist Hitomi Nishiyama at SUB (Osaka, 4/18/24)
After immersing myself in KYOTOGRAPHIE for several days (I’ll have much more to say about it soon!), I took the train to Osaka. Thanks to Japan’s wonderful high-speed trains, it’s actually a quicker commute than it is from the East Village or Brooklyn to the Upper...
KYOTOGRAPHIE KG+ Select: Masahiro Usami’s (宇佐美雅浩) Community Manda-las (April 17, 2024)
On my second day in Kyoto for the KYOTOGRAPHIE Kyoto International Photography Festival, I detoured from the main exhibitions to check out Masahiro Usami (宇佐美雅浩)’s exhibition Manda-la in the KG+ Select show at the Horikawa Oike Gallery. By the time I’d left, I felt I...