Music as a bridge

EVELYN SHIH, STAFF WRITER
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
01-05-2007

Music as a bridge -- Concert reflects pianist's life journey
By EVELYN SHIH, STAFF WRITER
Date: 01-05-2007, Friday
Section: GO!
Edtion: All Editions

WHO: Sachiko Kato.

WHAT: "From Japan to Jazz."

WHEN: 4 p.m. Sunday.

WHERE: Puffin Cultural Forum, 20 E. Oakdene Ave., Teaneck; 201-836-8923.

HOW MUCH: $15 suggested donation; $12 for seniors and students.

When she learned the "Jazz Concert tudes" of Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin, pianist Sachiko Kato wasn't looking for a "competition warhorse." If she wanted to do that, she could easily have chosen the work of Kapustin's fellow Russian, Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Kato may have built her repertoire with popular pieces to exhibit virtuosity as she was developing as a pianist, but she realized over the years that following fads was not enough.

"[Pieces] become trends; a lot of people play them, and then everyone forgets," she said. "Everyone plays them too often, too much, and then suddenly no one plays them anymore."

The pianist, who lives in New York but plays in Japan and across America, unwittingly helped start her own trend when she recorded the Kapustin tudes for release in Japan. The composer's jazz-inflected scores have begun to catch on in the Japanese classical music scene and have already become a hot topic on the Internet among music connoisseurs. Kato was even contacted for an interview by a student at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.

"He e-mailed me because I was the first Japanese pianist who played the Kapustin tudes, and he is writing a thesis on the works," she said.

Kapustin's tudes will feature prominently in Kato's concert, "From Japan to Jazz," at the Puffin Cultural Forum this Sunday. She will set off those pieces with works by jazz pianist Bill Evans, transcribed by composer Jed Distler.

"Bill Evans was classically trained, and he has some nuances of [Claude] Debussy, so his music follows Kapustin well," she said. "And that leads well into the Debussy, which in turn builds on Scriabin's Sonata No. 5. [That piece] is also kind of jazzy, if you think about it."

Kato's game of musical association includes works from her native Japan by Toru Takemitsu, who was greatly admired in the Western classical world by Igor Stravinsky.

Incidentally, Takemitsu was also influenced by jazz and the impressionistic music of Debussy but later began incorporating traditional Japanese music and instruments in his work.

The extremely varied program of "From Japan to Jazz" reflects Kato's own life journey. "As a bilingual, bicultural person, I can pay back my debt to the cultures that developed me as an artist by functioning as a bridge," she said.

When Kato arrived in America from Osaka, Japan, at age 14, it was music that acted as her bridge to the outside world.

"I didn't speak the language, and the only way I could really express myself was to play the piano," she said. "I hung on to it desperately, actually."

Now a Juilliard School alumna and an established performer, Kato has become the director of an annual concert series called "Weaving Japanese Sounds," which brings classical Japanese repertoire and new music by up-and-coming Japanese composers to this side of the Pacific. She also explores the body of Western classical pieces influenced by jazz, a pursuit that led her to Kapustin.

Yet Kato doesn't forget the music that she grew up on as a classical pianist. A Mozart sonata and a Chopin ballade round out her concert.

"I do play a lot of standard repertoire," she said. "I mix and match. To me, good music is good music, but as an artist, I think you have to be in touch with the music in your own time."

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E-mail: shih@northjersey.com

Illustrations/Photos: PHOTO - In avoiding a music trend, Sachiko Kato started her own.

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