An album of improvised duets between Kanoko Nishi on koto and Aram Shelton on soprano saxophone. The two instruments are quite different, representing wind & string families, with opposing Eastern and Western backgrounds. Surprisingly these two soloistic instruments share a common pitch range. The musicians explore a musical area far beyond the scope of either instruments’ tradition. The resulting dialog is constantly evolving where the sound is the melody.
SSM-008. 2010. Download available at Bandcamp.
Kanoko Nishi-Smith is a performer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Though classically trained on piano, receiving a BA in Classical Music Performance from Mills College, her recent interest has primarily been in performing 20th century and contemporary musical compositions for piano as well as for koto (Japanese 13-string zither), and free-improvisation in various different contexts, with musicians, as well as dancers, poets,
and visual artists.