Postponed: 4th Design Seminar NEXT Music Workshop + Talk: “Possibilities regarding public spaces as venues for music performances.”

This event has been postponed from its scheduled date due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. We seek your understanding and apologize for any inconvenience caused.

In 2019, the Kyushu University Graduate School of Design created the Design Seminar NEXT with the goal of finding new possibilities for design unconstrained by the standard theory of the field. Along with the Fundamental Design Seminar, which focuses on the systematization of design, our aim is for this to lead to the development of new educational methods. For the fourth Design Seminar NEXT, we will host the music workshop + talk on “Possibilities regarding public spaces as venues for music performances.”

A music workshop will be held with the upright piano located on the first floor of the design commons opened on the Ohashi campus in 2018. The event facilitator is Takuji Kawai, who is based in Itoshima, Fukuoka. Kawai is many things, such as a pianist, improvisational performer, and composer, and has held music workshops with people from a variety of different backgrounds. At this event, we hope that searching for new possibilities in your piano playing with Kawai will lead to thinking about the possibilities of music performances in public spaces.

We also welcome people who just want to watch the workshop, and there is a talk scheduled for afterwards. Anyone can participate, even if you don’t have any specialist knowledge in the field. We look forward to welcoming students from the university as well as visitors from elsewhere. If you wish to participate, please make a reservation here beforehand.

[Lecturer]
Takuji Kawai
Born in Kobe, Hyogo. Began learning to play classical piano as a child, and later developed an interest in modern music. Started playing improvised performances around 1987. Gained his Masters at the Tokyo University of the Arts (majoring in music) in 1991. While studying at university, he began working as an improvisational musician playing both solo and in ensembles, as well as an artist in a variety of genres. More recently, he has played modern music concerts and improvised live performances as a pianist, composed pieces, performed on instruments like the toy piano and melodica, accompanied spoken word and dance, and written poetry, among other things. In 2008 and 2012, he played a tour in Europe. In 2011, he was invited to play at a toy piano festival in New York. After over 20 years active in Tokyo, he moved to the city of Itoshima, Fukuoka in 2012, where he has resided since. His CDs include Piano Music of Toshi Ichiyanagai, in which he played music notated graphically, as well as toy piano albums Ma mère l’Oye and Petite Suite. He has collaborated with members of the general public, such as in his “Inari Project” at the 2014, 2016, and 2018 Itoshima International Art Festivals, as well as “Minokuchi Nunanouta” at the 2017 Primitive Sense Art Festival. He is also involved in collaborative expression workshops with disabled people.
http://www.sepia.dti.ne.jp/kawai/

[Coordinator]
Yuichiro Nagatsu (Assistant Professor, Kyushu University Faculty of Design)

[Host]
Kyushu University Graduate School of Design

[Support]
Kyushu University Graduate School of Design, Social Art Lab