Eric Schaefer + Ensemble - Hayashi (2024) [Hi-Res]

Japanese No is the oldest living form of theater. Themes such as guilt, love and redemption are dealt with in text, dance and music.

Eric Schaefer has been connected to the country of Japan and Japanese culture for many years. Inspired by his visits to the No Theater, he began composing the song cycle HAYASHI during a three-month stay and lessons with Prof. Takanori Fujita (Kyoto City University of Arts).

A term that designates the music ensemble performing in No, but which can also describe a grove. The premiere of HAYASHI took place at the Jazzfest at Oper Leipzig 2023 - performed by the Eric Schaefer Ensemble and together with the Japanese artists Ichi-Go (dance) and Acci Baba (video art). Nun liegt die Studioproduktion von HAYASHI vor. Auf Vinyl und in einer limitierten Auflage. Mit einem Coverbild der in Kyoto lebenden Kalligraphin Chizu Ikura.

The music of No has developed from a heterogeneous variety of folk and religious varieties (matsuris, Buddhist rituals) and has a compositional structure that on the one hand gives the performers precise instructions, but on the other hand has self-determined spaces and blurs that open up to improvisation.

The composition HAYASHI by Eric Schaefer takes up this modus operandi of music-making in notheater. The collaboration between classically trained and improvising musicians enables this fluid interaction between fixed and freely interpretable parts of the composition.

There is only one score for everyone, one semantic level on which everyone moves. “Ultimately,” says Eric Schaefer, ”with the HAYASHI ensemble, we are exploring the question of what this ancient art form of No can offer us aesthetically today.

This is done in the spirit of Zeami, the founder of the No Theater, who wrote 600 year