Silk Road Ensemble Artists

Kojiro Umezaki
shakuhachi/composer (b. 1968, Japan)

"My mother is from Denmark and my dad is Japanese. They met in the United States, married, and moved back to Japan. I grew up in Tokyo. My multinational background may be one of the reasons that it doesn’t seem to make sense for me to limit myself to the traditional shakuhachi repertoire. I try to play it to the best of my ability, but essentially I don’t feel that that is what I’m meant for. In all my work, I try to put the shakuhachi in a more contemporary, musically diverse context. Hopefully this work can become part of the evolutionary process of the instrument. In that sense, Silk Road Project’s mission for music is quite similar to mine."

Kojiro Umezaki grew up in Tokyo, Japan where he received traditional instruction on the shakuhachi [SHA koo ha chee] (Japanese end-blown bamboo flute), an instrument with a history dating back to 7th century. His career encompasses both traditional and technology-based music for shakuhachi and a range of electronic media. He presently lives in Montreal and teaches in the Faculty of Music at McGill University.

Kojiro Umezaki performs with the Silk Road Ensemble and appears on the two most recent recordings by the Silk Road Ensemble albums released by Sony Classical: Beyond the Horizon and New Impossibilities.