SOUND TYPE Concert: ASA-CHANG & Junray

ASA-CHANG & Junray is on their first ever US tour! This legendary experimental electronic band from Japan explores the transference of human to machine sounds using a processing device, Junray Tronics, weaving through rhythmic and tonal references of Jakarta, India and Japan. Led by self-taught tabla-bongo player, Asa-Chang (percussion), the band will perform as a trio including Yoshihiro Goseki (saxophone, flute), Sena Oshima (violin), and the “Junray Tronics” soundsystem.

The concert will open with a screening of Moon Viewing Platform by Nadia Hironaka, Matthew Suib, and Eugene Lew, an interdisciplinary public installation that transformed an inhospitable and disused stretch of open-air land into a large-scale performance/gathering space featuring regular acts of caring, a stage, and building-sized nighttime video projections featuring an episodic series of short films. The garden/installation references the karesansui (Japanese dry landscape garden), as it becomes a set for a series of short videos and musical performances, inviting audiences to enter another world through the senses and the imagination and provides the opportunity to engage in intimate commemorative gatherings that celebrate compassion, creativity, and community as essential components of human life.

ARTIST BIO

ASA-CHANG & Junray commenced activities as a solo unit in 1997. Tabla wizard U-zhaan joined in 2000, and the group began staging live performances with Junray Tronics. Its music is imbued with a distinctive vibe produced by the combination of tribal and abstract sounds.

Beginning in 2000, the group appeared at Fuji Rock for five consecutive years, a feat unmatched by any other acts. After its 2001 release in Japan, "Hana," its second album, was also released in the United Kingdom under the Leaf label, and was selected as the fourth best album of 2002 by the British magazine The Wire and best album of the same year by Mojo Magazine and Muzik. Besides these accolades in Europe, the group and "Hana" received extensive coverage in the music media of Australia, the United States, Chile, and other countries around the world. A collaboration with contemporary dancers in a music video created a buzz worldwide, and was followed in 2009 by the staging of "Aoiro Theater" featuring their music with dance at Setagaya Public Theatre. A production that could only have been created by a musician (and ex-makeup artist), the work garnered high ratings for its free conception untrammeled by the conventional framework of stage arts.

In 2012, it unveiled the opus "NEW Aoiro Theater" at Kyoto Experiment 2012 with the addition of Yoshihiro Goseki and Anzu Suhara as members. Live performances were held in 4 cities in Germany in 2018 and in Russia and Lithuania in 2019.

In 2022, a remix contest was held as an event to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the release of "Hana", and there were many entries from all over the world.

After a period of forced self-restraint due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2023 we performed at Japan's largest outdoor music festival, “FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL”.

Nadia Hironaka & Matthew Suib are Philadelphia-based artists who have been collaborators since 2008. They are recipients of several honored awards including a 2015 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Pew Fellowships in the Arts, and Fellowships from CFEVA and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Their work has been widely exhibited both domestically and abroad at venues including Fondazione MAXXI (Rome), New Media Gallery (Vancouver), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), UCLA Hammer Museum, PS1/MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Arizona State University Art Museum. They have been artists-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Banff Centre, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Matthew Suib is co-founder of Greenhouse Media and Nadia Hironaka serves as a professor and department chair of Film and Video at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Hironaka and Suib are represented by Locks Gallery. The couple, along with their daughter and one cat, reside in South Philly.

Eugene Lew is primarily engaged in the production, management, transformation, design, performance, (attempted) capture, storage, and playback of sound/music—preferably in collaboration with others, in real life. The fleeting moment, aggregate independent decision-making, and stochastic phenomena are especially fascinating and vital to his practice and general existence. He seeks experiences that cannot be captured (or sought) but might be witnessed/overheard if one just so happens to be in the right place at the right time to step into the constant cycle of remembering/forgetting/reconstructing. He has resided and worked in Philadelphia for over 20 years, and is committed to the city and the communities of which he is fortunate to be a member.

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