kodo drummers tour uk

Rafi Gokay Wol

Yasemin kandemiroğlu.

“ Indeed, if there is such a thing as perfection in music, Kodo comes as near to it as any group in the world.” Boston Globe

HarrisonParrott is proud of its long association with Kodo for whom it has arranged tours since  1996 . Based on Sado Island in northern Japan, this internationally renowned group of drummers made their debut at the Berlin Festival in  1981  and have been dazzling audiences worldwide since then.

The ensemble strives to both preserve and reinterpret traditional Japanese performing arts in a spectacular theatrical show. In  2012  Kodo announced the realisation of a new vision with its appointment of Kabuki legend, Tamasaburo Bando, as their Artistic Director. Under his direction the ensemble has developed even further to encompass everything from energetic physically-charged ensemble drumming to smaller groups and soloists featuring a variety of authentic percussion instruments as well as flute, shamisen and dance. 

The group have previously won the Gold Disc Award for Japanese Classical Music for Irodori, as well as Japanese Foreign Ministry Award for their overseas tours, the MIDEM Music Video Award at the Cannes Music Festival and the Matsuo Performing Arts award for Japanese Music. Kodo have seen success as recording artists with their releases of albums: Kodo I, Ubu-Suna, Hero , and The Hunted motion picture soundtrack.

Their work as musicians and performers extends further with their development of The Kodo Cultural Foundation. The Foundation was created to bring Kodo together on a larger scale. It runs social educational activities with the local community on Sado Island, as well as hold the Earth Celebration International Arts Festival every year for their home village, inviting other international artists to perform and indulge in cultural ideas.

Since  2000 , HarrisonParrott has organised the following tours for Kodo:

2022  — One Earth Tour — Tsuzumi, marking their 40 th anniversary with 15 concerts across the UK , France, Croatia, Finland and Poland.

2020 – One Earth Tour – Legacy under the direction of Yuichiro Funabashi, with a total of 9  performances across Europe . 

2018  – One Earth Tour – Evolution, with a  5  concert tour of the  UK  and one concert in Helsinki

2016  – One Earth Tour marking their  35 th  anniversary, with  2  concerts in Rotterdam and Eindhoven and a  9  concert tour of the  UK   &  France

2014  – concerts in Paris, Uppsala  &  Helsinki, as well as an  8  concert tour of the  UK   &  Eirean, London

2012  – as well as the four concert residency at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, two concerts at the National Concert Hall, Dublin and a concert in Sweden 

2010  — a  19  concert tour of the  UK   &  Eire plus a concert in Helsinki

2009  — a tour of Europe including concerts in Zagreb, Istanbul, Izmir, London and Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris

2008  — two concerts in Buenos Aires as part of their tour to South America and a nine concert tour of the  UK   &  Eire

2006  — a thirteen concert tour of the  UK   &  Eire

2004  — a seven concert tour of the  UK   &  Eire including a four-concert, sold out residency at the Royal Festival Hall

2001  — a four-concert tour of Estonia and Finland

2000  — an eleven-concert tour of the  UK   &  Eire, including a five-concert residency at the Barbican

“ There are rare musical or theatrical performances that are so transcendentally excellent that you leave the theatre with your head spinning, desperately trying to process what it is that you’ve just seen. Japanese taiko drumming ensemble Kodo’s new show Warabe is one of those productions.” *****

“ Kodo’s stage shows are elaborate affairs: carefully lit, designed and choreographed.“

“ These are performances of technical virtuosity that few can match. The whole performance culminated in a splendid ensemble piece blending skill and humour, with the drummers so obviously enjoying themselves it was infectious.”

“ This was an amazing evening from the whole group of 15 performers and the Barbican rose in tribute at the end of a vibrant exhibition of drumming.“

Kodo Tours in Europe in February and March  2024

Kodo: One Earth Tour  2022

KODO BRINGS LEGACY PROJECT TO EUROPE

KODO  — Finland 2018

KODO  — United Kingdom 2018

Kodo  — france and united kingdom 2016.

KODO  — Netherlands 2016

Kodo  — sweden and finland 2014.

KODO  — United Kingdom &  Ireland 2014

KODO  — France 2014

KODO  — Ireland and France 2012

KODO  — Sweden 2012

Kodo  — united kingdom 2010, kodo  — finland, uk and ireland 2010.

TAIKO PERFORMING ENSEMBLE KODO TOUR EUROPE

Kodo embark on biennial europe tour celebrating 40 th anniversary with tsuzumi, new album collaboration: ​ “ kodo together”.

KODO brings EVOLUTION project to Europe

Kodo continue their 30 th anniversary tour of europe, kodo perform dadan residency at théâtre du châtelet, kodo returns to uk for nationwide tour, join our mailing list.

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Kodo drummers: Mystery, Barbican, London — ‘Big drums steal the show’

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Kodo are based on the island of Sado, 250 miles north-west of Tokyo. A third of their year is set aside for training (both musical and cardiovascular), a third is spent performing in Japan and the other four months are devoted to the international circuit: Milan, St Petersburg, Basingstoke and the Barbican, which staged the UK premiere of Mystery on Monday night.

Mystery is the brainchild of kabuki legend Tamasaburo Bando who took over as artistic director in 2012. His aim was to enhance the theatrical aspect of Kodo’s output and to make it more “urban” in tone. In Mystery he hopes to invoke the sense of wonder experienced in a shrine or a great forest: “At the end of the show, I’ll be happy if they leave with a sense of purification.” Nothing like aiming high.

Traditional set pieces still predominate but the two-and-a-half-hour show is embellished with new material, some of it composed by Kodo members. There is also a long, festival-style dance number for a quartet of spiralling serpents and a protracted comedy routine in which three terrified little maids placate hairy monsters with bowls of soup. The music’s percussive core is ornamented by a fair bit of penny whistle playing and some rather feeble chanting but it is the drumming that the packed house has come for.

The big o-daiko drums inevitably steal the show but there are welcome shifts in scale. At one point seven of the 15 performers line up at the footlights to demonstrate the different sounds to be had from a single drum with a slapping palm, a tickling finger or a little silk bag of bells: a playful masterclass in percussion technique.

For the first-act closer, 14 players assail their double-headed drums in a great wall of sound, hands and sticks a blur as the rhythms merge and multiply. Best of all was the “Miyake” in which a bare-chested Masayuki Sakamoto poses in a deep lunge and rails against his huge dadaiko drum with two massive sticks, torso pulsating like a sound wave: part percussion, part CPR.

European tour continues, kodo.or.jp

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KODO One Earth Tour 2023: Tsuzumi

March 23, 2023 | 7:00 pm.

Feel the reverberations of heaven and earth in harmony with this all-new performance from internationally renowned taiko performing arts ensemble, KODO. Entitled “Tsuzumi,” this explosive performance, created to commemorate the ensemble’s 40th anniversary, will electrify, dazzle and uplift audiences of all ages. Guided by three words that underpin the KODO mission  living, learning, creating – the visceral sound of KODO’s taiko drumming explores the limitless possibilities of the traditional Japanese drum forging new directions for a vibrant living artform. KODO has given over 6,500 performances in five continents cementing the ensemble as a global phenomenon like no other. Don’t miss a beat!

Click HERE to read Frequently Asked Questions

LOCATION: Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts

INFORMATION AND TICKETS: Contact  [email protected] , call 800-841-2787 or 828-262-4046, visit the box office at the Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts, 733 Rivers Street, Boone, NC, or purchase online.

TICKETS: $25 adults; $20 local resident (proof of residency in Watauga, Ashe, or Avery counties) ; $10 students

SHOWTIME: Thursday, March 23, 2023 | 7pm; doors open at 6pm

Exploring the limitless possibilities of the traditional Japanese drum, the taiko, Kodo is forging new directions for a vibrant living art-form. Since the group’s debut at the Berlin Festival in 1981, Kodo has given over 6,500 performances on all five continents, spending about a third of the year overseas, a third touring in Japan and a third rehearsing and preparing new material on Sado Island. Kodo strives to both preserve and re-interpret traditional Japanese performing arts. Beyond this, members on tours and research trips all over the globe have brought back to Sado a kaleidoscope of world music and experiences which now exerts a strong influence on the group’s performances and compositions. Collaborations with other artists and composers extend right across the musical spectrum, and Kodo’s lack of preconceptions about its music continues to produce startling new fusion and forms.

photos byTakashi Okamoto

PRESS COMMENTS

“Traditional rituals recast as theater, and contemporary thoughts about ancient instruments both figure in Kodo’s performance, which includes ancient and modern compositions. Yet with tense, angular postures, with stylized, frozen gestures and, in one playful piece, with animal-like scampering and slithering, Kodo reminds its audience that, above all, its music is a matter of flesh and blood, wood and stretched skin. Kodo can raise the roof, but the group can also show extraordinary finesse.” —The New York Times

“Having spent some time with them, jazz drummer and composer Max Roach thinks of the Japanese drummers of Kodo as regular guys. On stage it’s another story – clad in sweatbands and loincloths, they are like percussionist kamikazes. You expect them to drum till they drop. ‘The technique they use to play percussion instruments is totally different from anything I’ve ever seen,’ he says… ‘They deal with that ‘visual sound’ more than anyone I’ve ever known.’” —The Village Voice

“Indeed, if there is such a thing as perfection in music, Kodo comes as near to it as any group in the world.” —The Boston Globe

“Superlatives don’t really exist to convey the primal power and bravura beauty of Kodo. … Throughout, the devil of it is the combination of the discipline of a surgeon’s scalpel with the primitive, muscular endurance of a cavalry charge. The speed and dexterity are as impressive as the physical tenacity is breathtaking.” —Chicago Tribune

“Balancing a deadly aggression with utter tranquility, their sound stretches from the lightest of rainfall to cataclysmic thunderclaps, from pleasant laughter to discordant fear and from silence to – just once here – a wall of sound, as high, frightening and impregnable as a mountain. Musicians, theatre directors and all interested in the sheer power of sound to feed emotions should take note.” —The Guardian / UK

“The spectator is crushed by their power and then suddenly, silence. Complete silence as if life had stopped in an instant, no applause, not even a breath. I have never seen a show where the audience was so close to suffocating. Don’t miss this, the sound of their drums will be engraved forever on your memory.” —Le Quotidien de Paris / FRANCE

Dynamic, electrifying vision ….Nothing will prepare you for the 1,000 lb. drum assault, the precise timing or the wall of sound. An essential experience.” —Time Out / UK

We would like to thank our corporate, hotel and media sponsors for their generous support.

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Exploring the limitless possibilities of the traditional Japanese drum, the taiko, Kodo is forging new directions for a vibrant living art-form.

• Kodo Performances

“Kodo One Earth Tour 2023: Tsuzumi” North America Tour

Performance Details Schedule All Events

Feel the reverberations of heaven and earth in harmony.

Our 2021 North America tour was postponed due to the pandemic, so we have been looking forward to sharing this program with you all for a long time. Thank you for your patience and encouragement. We hope this performance will uplift you and bring you joy.

In Japanese, the word “Kodo” holds a double meaning. It can be translated as “heartbeat,” the primal source of all rhythm. However, our group’s name is written with different characters, which mean “drum” and “child.” This reflects Kodo’s desire to play the drums with the simple heart of a child. To commemorate our 40th anniversary in 2021, we created two new touring productions based on our name: “Tsuzumi” takes its name and theme from the drum character, and “Warabe” from the child element.

Tsuzumi, the first work, opens with a very special piece in our ensemble’s history that is seldom performed on tour— Dyu-Ha . The late Maki Ishii, a modern composer who was introduced to Kodo by conductor Seiji Ozawa, presented this piece to Kodo as a gift to congratulate our ensemble on its debut in 1981. We will perform Dyu-Ha on this tour for the first time in North America since 1989. Today’s programme also features Ishii’s masterpiece Monochrome and other Kodo signature pieces such as O-daiko , Yatai-bayash i, and Zoku , coupled with new compositions. Join us as we trace our group’s origins back to the beginning, to reflect on our history and reaffirm what has shaped Kodo today.

Conjured and honed on Sado, Kodo’s sound is like no other.

Yuichiro Funabashi, Director

Yuichiro Funabashi

Eiichi Saito ,  Jun Jidai ,  Koki Miura ,  Ryotaro Leo Ikenaga ,  Reo Kitabayashi ,  Mizuki Yoneyama ,  Yuta Kimura ,  Yuki Hirata , Taiyo Onoda ,  Kei Sadanari ,  Moe Niiyama ,  Jumpei Nonaka, Hana Ogawa (Junior Member) *Subject to change without notice.

Features Dyu-Ha, Monochrome, O-daiko, Yatai-bayashi, Zoku , new compositions, and more.

• Jan 27 (Fri), 2023 - Jan 28 (Sat), 2023 Meany Center for Performing Arts, Meany Hall, Seattle, Washington, USA [SOLD OUT]
• Jan 31 (Tue), 2023 Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, California, USA
• Feb 2 (Thu), 2023 Soka Performing Arts Center Concert Hall, Aliso Viejo, OC, California, USA [SOLD OUT]
• Feb 4 (Sat), 2023 - Feb 5 (Sun), 2023 Zellerbach Auditorium, Berkeley, California, USA [SOLD OUT]
• Feb 8 (Wed), 2023 Smith Center for the Performing Arts, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
• Feb 10 (Fri), 2023 Granada Theatre, Santa Barbara, California, USA
• Feb 11 (Sat), 2023 Balboa Theatre, San Diego, California, USA [SOLD OUT]
• Feb 15 (Wed), 2023 - Feb 16 (Thu), 2023 Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts (Virginia G. Piper Theater), Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
• Feb 18 (Sat), 2023 - Feb 19 (Sun), 2023 Newman Center (June Swaner Gates Concert Hall), Denver, Colorado, USA [SOLD OUT]
• Feb 23 (Thu), 2023 The Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
• Feb 25 (Sat), 2023 Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts (Helzberg Hall), Kansas City, Missouri, USA
• Feb 27 (Mon), 2023 Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
• Mar 1 (Wed), 2023 Orpheum Theater, Omaha, Nebraska, USA
• Mar 5 (Sun), 2023 Chicago Symphony Hall, Chicago, Illinois, USA [SOLD OUT]
• Mar 7 (Tue), 2023 Kimmel Center for Performing Arts (Miller Theater), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Mar 9 (Thu), 2023 Jorgensen Center, Storrs, Connecticut, USA
• Mar 12 (Sun), 2023 Boston Symphony Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, USA [SOLD OUT]
• Mar 14 (Tue), 2023 New Jersey Performing Arts Center (Prudential Hall), Newark, New Jersey, USA
• Mar 16 (Thu), 2023 Place des Arts (Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier), Montreal, Quebec, Canada [SOLD OUT]
• Mar 18 (Sat), 2023 George Mason University Center for the Arts Concert Hall, Fairfax, Virginia, USA [SOLD OUT]
• Mar 19 (Sun), 2023 Chrysler Hall, Norfolk, Virginia, USA
• Mar 21 (Tue), 2023 Peace Center (Peace Concert Hall), Greenville, South Carolina, USA
• Mar 23 (Thu), 2023 Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts, Boone, North Carolina, USA
• Mar 25 (Sat), 2023 Lucas Theater for the Arts at Savannah Music Festival, Savannah, Georgia, USA