Kumiko Okamura

Kumiko Okamura

Kumiko Self — An Event Score

Kumiko enters left stage, carrying a tape recorder. She stops near centre stage and presses the 'play' button. The audience hears her recorded voice telling, in third person, how Kumiko Okamura learned piano as a child: "...One day, when she saw a cat walk over the keys of a piano, touching and playing them, she stopped learning the piano, and started recording on tape... " The tape reaches its end. Kumiko presses 'stop', looks around and listens.

Instruments are scattered all over the stage. She rewinds the tape and hits the 'record' button. Focussing on an inner image, she picks up and works with whatever instruments or materials are at hand to make the music come closest to that inner image. In an act of straight doing, she uses anything from voice, keyboard, drums, field recordings, acoustic or electric guitar, toys and voice instruments, alongside any other existing sound.

Kumiko performs without a mission, and in no specific genre. There are neither conscious influences nor obvious sources of inspiration. The performance can be very wild or sensitive and delicate. It may sound optimistic or pessimistic and move into unexplored territory. It might value simplicity over complexity, and shifts the emphasis from what an artist 'makes' to the artist's creative practice, personality and actions. Kumiko starts playing, and continues with the flux until she finishes, presses the 'stop' button and exits right stage.

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Listen to Kumiko Okamura

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(Album) MDDA    [Free MP3: Intervall-audio, 2007]

|01| Untitled 1 |02| Untitled 2
|03| Untitled 3 |04| Untitled 4
|05| Untitled 5 |06| Untitled 6
A free downloadable netaudio release that does not serve to prevent, but rather to invite, shock [IA.003].


(Album) Volvo – volvo live    
[CD-R: Self-released, 2004]

|01| Unborn |02| Moving on
|03| Weeping pillow |04| Bossa velha
|05| Mirror man |06| And you said |07| Volvo
Recorded live at EF Gallery, Tokyo, 18 March 2004. Musicians: Nobara Hayakawa (voice), Shigehiro Tsubota (guitar, noises and voices), Philippe Chatelain (textures, beats), Kumiko Okamura (atmosphere, beats).


(Album) Sauce 75    [Tape: Menu 06, 2000]

|01| Track 01 |02| Track 02 |03| Track 03
Improvisations: battery-powered Casio keyboard and environment; focus on minimal sounds and use of extreme repetition; all played live and recorded straigth to tape.



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