CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) presents the next installment of its Paradise Laboratory concert series, featuring ambient, atmospheric, improvised music by trio Ayumi Ishito (tenor saxophone and electronics), Rema Hasumi (synthesizer) & Yuko Togami (drums), with special guest the legendary Tamio Shirashi (alto sax, electronics) who is known for his frenetic bursts of high-pitched sounds at the very extreme of what the alto can produce.

PARADISE LABORATORY is a playground for sonic and visual experimentation. Conceived of during the pandemic by the renowned Korean traditional multi-instrumentalist, curator, and scholar gamin, Paradise Laboratory provides musical artists with opportunities to rehearse, record, film, and perform with other musical, visual, and/or dance artists in an experimental, process-oriented, and artist-centered fashion.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Tamio Shiraishi is, along with Keiji Haino, a founding member of the Japanese avant garde group Fushitsusha in the 1970s. His involvement with Fushitsusha was however transient and the experience and connections formed through it led him to choose the saxophone as his main instrument. In 1990 Shiraishi moved to New York where he now plays solo material at NYC subway stops and collaborative projects at other venues. At 74 years of age Tamio Shiraishi has experienced a lot and, regardless of the lack of formal education in music, has honed his unique approach to the alto saxophone to a high level of mastery. His style may be characterized as a microtonal exploration of the altissimo-range, somewhat reminiscent of traditional Japanese Enka music. While exploring the limits of common aesthetic conceptions, Shiraishi’s performances in New York subway stops have attracted a small following and aroused conversations about the meaning of this form of expression.

http://www.shiraishitamio.info

Ayumi Ishito was born and raised in Ishikawa, Japan. At the age of 19, she began playing tenor saxophone in a college big band at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. In 2007, Ayumi received a scholarship to attend Berkee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She spent three years there studying performance and composition. After graduating from Berklee, Ayumi moved to New York in 2010. Ayumi has been playing with many different groups. One of her recent projects, Open Question, received a 4-star review in DownBeat magazine in 2022. Another of her projects, The Spacemen, was selected for the Best Jazz of 2021 on Bandcamp. As a composer, Ayumi has been leading her quintet since 2011 and performing her compositions. The band released two albums, “View From A Little Cave” in 2016 and “Midnite Cinema” in 2019.

https://www.ayumiishito.com

Rema Hasumi is an experimental pianist, vocalist, producer and writer who is based out of Brooklyn, NY. Hasumi was born in 1983 in Fukuoka, Japan, and moved to the United States in 2002 to pursue her passion for music, which was nurtured through more than ten years of classical piano study and the listening experiences of her audiophile parent’s record collection. Hasumi has performed at venues across NY, the United States and Asia. In 2009 she performed at the Kennedy Center as one of the four finalists of Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Pianist Competition. In 2014, upon invitation by acclaimed vocalist Jen Shyu, Hasumi presented her solo work “The Patterns of Duplicity” at a series of “Solo Rites” concerts by Ms. Shyu. The piece featured the poetry “Spring and Asura” (1925) by Kenji Miyazawa interpreted in multiple languages, exploring the possibilities of musical ideas unique and inherent to each language. Hasumi has also worked extensively as both pianist and vocalist in many other projects, including a series of collaborations with the saxophonist Darius Jones in which they performed the music of Alice Coltrane. She has also worked as the vocalist in the guitarist Todd Neufeld’s new two-drummer group. Hasumi’s new trio premiered in June 2015 in two nights of concerts in NYC. It featured compositions she wrote for piano and voice, performed alongside the great Randy Peterson and Masa Kamaguchi. Her first record “UTAZATA” was released in May 2015 from Ruweh Records, which she runs as a co-founder. It features the highly sympathetic cast of Todd Neufeld (guitar), Thomas Morgan (bass), Billy Mintz (drums), and fiery guest musicians Ben Gerstein (trombone) and Sergio Krakowski (pandeiro). The group interprets the themes of Japanese Gagaku and ritual music. This record was made as a result of mindful searching on femininity, mythology and rituals in Japanese performing arts. In 2016, Hasumi released a trio recording “Billows of Blue” featuring Randy Peterson and Masa Kamaguchi. Her most recent album and a solo recording, called “Abiding Dawn”, reveals Hasumi’s sound world all alone, layering and unlayering voice, piano and analog synthesizers in a seamless journey of eight gorgeous tracks. The word and the wordless, the pitched and the unpitched all meet in Hasumi’s voice, while her piano honors the influences of Alice Coltrane and Masabumi Kikuchi, met squarely on her own honest terms. The use of synthesizer, a vintage Korg Delta DL-50, serves to encompass and meld the sonic meal.

https://remahasumi.bandcamp.com

Yuko Togami is a drummer and composer currently based in New York City, originally from Saitama, Japan. She was exposed to music from a very early age as she was always watching her mother teach piano and Eurhythmics. She started taking Eurhythmics classes and playing piano when she was about 5. Later on, she also started playing marimba and studied classical music until she graduated from high school. While she was in high school, she got attracted to drums and began taking drum lessons. A couple years later, she started performing as a drummer based in Tokyo. In 2013, she moved to New York City to pursue further musical studies at the City College of New York. She received a scholarship from The Kaye Scholars Program, and studied privately with Adam Cruz, Nasheet Waits, and Ben Street. She graduated with her BFA degree in jazz performance and The Pro Musica Award from City College, and has performed with many different musicians and projects including Steve Wilson, Mike Holober, Scott Reeves, Ben Paterson, Mark Wade, Jakob Dreyer, Takaaki Otomo, Nori Naraoka, Berta Moreno, Maksim Perepelica, Latvian Concert Choir, Musicsnake, Kijima Sound System. Her debut album “Dawn” was released in April 2018 and won a Silver Medal at the 2018 Global Music Awards for Outstanding Achievement.

https://www.yukotogami.com/

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

CRS (CENTER FOR REMEMBERING & SHARING) is a spiritual healing and art center founded in 2004 by the writer/lecturer/spiritual counselor Yasuko Kasaki and artist Christopher Pelham. Our mission is guided by A Course in Miracles (ACIM). ACIM says that recognizing that you and your brother are actually one is the only way to experience peace. The mission of CRS is to promote the awareness that limitless creativity lives within each of us. We train minds to recognize the light in themselves and others and provide them opportunities to share their inner vision through the healing and creative arts. Since its founding CRS has provided numerous residencies and performance and exhibition opportunities to artists from all over the world. Currently, CRS is an ongoing sponsor of M³ (Mutual Mentorship for Musicians), a platform created to empower, elevate, normalize and give visibility to women, non-binary musicians and those of other historically underrepresented gender identities in intersection with race, sexuality, or ability across generations in the US and worldwide, through a radical model of mentorship and musical collaborative commissions.

https://crsny.org