Spring Photos: Japan Twang: An Evening with Shamisen Player Michiyoshi Sato

On Tuesday, March 6, 2018 a rare performance by Michiyoshi Sato outside of Japan took place at Wesleyan University’s World Music Hall. He is one of Japan’s leading practitioners of tsugaru-jamisen, an improvisatory musical style performed on a Japanese three-stringed spike lute called a shamisen. Mr. Sato is known for a cutting-edge performance style that fuses the traditional with the modern, and the classics with pop. In his Connecticut debut, the first stop on his second tour of the United States, he stretched the limits of his instrument and his art, and took the audience through traditional folk songs, contemporary improvisation, and original compositions.

Photos by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album onĀ Flickr.