Seijiro Murayama is an experimental musician, composer and improviser on percussions and drums. He has been living in Paris for the last 10 years.
His first performance on drums occurred in 2005 in Menza pri koritu, AKC Metelkova mesto. When he was performing in Ljubljana for the second time with Renato Rinaldi in Mai 2005 he also had a look of the Studio Azil, which got him interested in a residence.
Seijiro belongs to the second generation of creators of musical improvisation. He is very appreciated in his field. He had already worked with many well known musicians and composers. He is often involved in projects with dancers, painters, philosophers, video artists… (A list of his projects and discography is available on here.)
A basis for his creating is listening to the sounds of people, nature or simply silence. The object of his interest, research and thoughts is non-language, which for him is a basis for human speech and performance. Seijiro’s music is not only a sequence of sounds but a way of thinking and questioning the relation between a language (set of symbols) and non-language. For him a non-language is a state before the development of speech, and are those thoughts, perceptions, functions, which cannot be expressed by speaking. He reaches non-language by listening to different sounds.
At the residence in Studio Azil he worked with Ryuzo Fukuhara, a butoh dancer that lives in Slovenia and with Tim Bleichmann who is a computer musician from Vienna. Seijiro and Ryuzo met during the residence. Tim, who has been working with Seijiro since 2007, was invited in this residential project by Seijiro himself.
On the 4th of August 2009 Seijiro and Tim Bleichmann took part in the show Godbeni imperializem at Radio Študent where they presented their project. (You can listen to the live concert here.):
On the 8th of August they also had a concert in Menza pri koritu, and at the end we could also see a dancing act by Ryuzo Fukuhara. Seijiro and Ryuzo created a music-dance project during the residence, which they presented on the 13th of September in Menza pri koritu. (Look at the performance here.)
Besides everything we have already mentioned Seijiro also organized series of improvisation workshops, which attracted more than 20 young Slovene musicians and actors. He is also planning on working with them next year. They stayed in touch by internet and he also prepared a special composition for each and every one of them.
Besides the fact that he joined forces with young musicians, Seijiro also got in contact with Tomaž Grom, N’Tok, Luka Prinčič, Irena Tomažin, Radical Improvisation duet and arranged future projects with them.
Music review: Mladina, 2009/32/audio. Goran Kompoš: Transfer, improvisation and boot.
Music review: Mladina, 2005/49/rodeo. Jaša K. Kacin: Shaman and drums
Video of a solo performance in Menza pri koritu on the 7th of October. Video was shot and moderated by Jasper Spoelstra.