AONO JIKKEN ENSEMBLE

PRESENTS LIVE MUSIC FOR SILENT FILMS AT CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL

The Aono Jikken Ensemble will give a free live music for silent films presentation and discussion at the Seattle Cherry Blossom and Japanese Cultural Festival on Saturday, April 22nd, at 3:30 p.m. in Seattle Center's Fischer Pavillion (west end of the former Flag Pavillion). The presentation will feature rare screenings, with live accompaniment, of two short early silent films by master Japanese directors Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story, Late Autumn) and Mikio Naruse (When A Woman Ascends The Stairs, Floating Clouds) [see synopsis below]. The films, with new live scores, were previously given their Northwest premieres by AJE to sold-out audiences at the Northwest Film Forum and Broadway Performance Hall and are among AJE's most accessible work with the film's emphasis on slapstick comedy. AJE uses a unique assortment of traditional and invented instruments, sound toys, found objects, and vocals that blend traditional Japanese music with a wide range of influences ranging (in these scores) from klezmer, reggae, and Latin to avant-garde sound experimentation. AJE will give a short talk and musical demonstration before accompanying the film screenings. The Seattle Cherry Blossom and Japanese Cultural Festival, which runs free April 21-23 at Seattle Center, celebrates it's 30th anniversary by highlighting contemporary arts (from the 1950's on) in the Northwest as part of it's Lives and Legacies theme.

A Straight Forward Boy (Tokkan Kozo)
Yasujiro Ozu's 1929 comedy is a rediscovered 14 minute fragment from a lost film that was based on the O. Henry short story The Ransom of Red Chief. An innocent-looking boy is abducted by a kidnapper who takes him to work for his oyabun (underworld boss). The kidnappers soon realize they've bitten of more than they can chew when the kid turns out to be an incorrigible mischief maker. The hapless criminals become so frustrated they try to return the boy to no avail.

Flunky, Work Hard! (Koshiben Gambare)
Mikio Naruse's 30 minute comedy-drama from 1931, aka Little Man Do Your Best, employs grandstanding style in a slapstick satire of people at the end of their financial rope. A meek insurance salesman ducks and hides whenever conflict arises, and his wife and son grow tired of both his humility and their poverty. The antics eventually dissolve into tear-jerking tragedy as the salesman is driven to distraction in an effort to succeed but ends up learning the value of family over materialism.

Aono Jikken Ensemble (AJE), founded in 1997, explores new sights and sounds in experimental music and performance-based art. AJE is the only group in the country devoted to the creation and presentation of live original music/sound scores for classic Asian silent cinema. They have created scores for the 1926 Japanese avant-garde masterpiece A Page of Madness; the 1932 Chinese martial arts adventure Swordswoman of Huangjiang; Kaneto Shindo's 1960 cinematic poem The Naked Island; Mikio Naruse's 1933 melodrama Nightly Dreams; and several 1930's dramas and comedies by Yasujiro Ozu, including A Story of Floating Weeds, The Lady and The Beard, and An Inn in Tokyo. AJE's stage works include 2002's Komori-uta (Lullaby), depicting the journey of a Japanese "war bride" in post World War II America; and 2005's Kaiki Shoku (Eclipse), about executed, turn-of-the-last-century political prisoner Suga Kanno. AJE has presented their work at the Seattle International Film Festival, Northwest Film Forum, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, On the Boards, Seattle Asian Art Museum and Theatre Off Jackson. Upcoming AJE projects include new live scores, with benshi - the traditional form of silent film narration, for To Sleep So As To Dream, Kaizo Hayashi's tribute to Japanese silent cinema, and Taki no Shiraito: The Water Magician, an important, rarely seen early work by master director Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu). The group is also working on the stage pieces Kiga (Hunger), about women surviving war during Japan's middle ages, and Kioku, an experimental reflection on human consciousness in the nuclear age. AJE is William Satake Blauvelt, Susie Kozawa, Michael Shannon, Naho Shioya, Esther Sugai, and Marcia Takamura. www.aonojikken.net

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