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Born into a hereditary family of musicians associated with gagaku for more than 800 years, Mr. Sukeyasu Shiba played as a musician at the Department of Music of the Imperial Household Agency, for 27 years before leaving the post in 1984. As a leading member of the Music Department of the Imperial Household Agency, Sukeyasu Shiba specialized in performing the ryuteki flute. In addition to performing classical gagaku, he has devoted his energies to the revival of ancient Japanese musical forms. He frequently performs contemporary music for traditional Japanese instruments and is also active as a composer. Since retiring from his position at the Imperial Household Agency, he has performed widely on various types of transverse flutes. In 1985 he founded a gagaku ensemble “REIGAKUSHA” and has been serving as the Musical Director.

As a soloist and a member of ensemble, he was invited to many major international music festivals including the Festival d'Autumne in Paris, the Lincoln Center Festival in New York, the Tanglewood Festival, the Vienna Modern, the Ultima Festvial in Oslo, Salzburg Biennial and others. In 2010 the Music From Japan Festival featured on the works by Mr. Shiba, and the concerts in New York and Washington D.C. received favorable reviews.

He taught gagaku at Tokyo University of the Arts as a professor of music, at the Kunitachi Music University as a guest professor.

Mr. Shiba was awarded several prizes from the Japanese government; The National Arts Festival Excellence Award (1971), the Minister of Education’s Art Encouragement Prize (1987) and the Imperial Award of the Japan Art Academy (2003). And he decorated with “the Purple Ribbon Medal” (1999) and “The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon” (2009). He won the Mobile Music Award (1997), the Pola Award for Traditional Culture (1999) and the Nakajima Kenzo Memorial Music Award (2002).

Since 2003 he has been a member of the Japan Art Academy, and he was selected as Persons of Cultural Merit in 2011. He passed away in 2019.

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Reigakusha was established in 1985 as an ensemble of professional Gagaku musicians dedicated to the study and performance of the classical Gagaku repertoire and the creation of new music for ancient instruments.

Since its formation Reigakusha has gained a high reputation for its performance of the traditional Gagaku repertoire, its revival of classical works that had dropped out of the repertoire over the past few centuries, its reconstruction for performance purposes of defunct Chinese and Japanese Gagaku instruments modelled on the ancient instruments preserved in the Shōsōin Imperial Repository in Nara, and its commissions from leading Japanese composers of new works for Gagaku instruments. Reigakusha’s current repertoire consists of more than sixty ancient Gagaku pieces, thirty new works in the classical idiom, twenty works revived on the basis of academic research into music that had long disappeared from the traditional repertoire, and many major new works by contemporary composers such as TAKEMITSU Tōru, ICHIYANAGI Toshi, ISHII Maki and SARUYA Toshirō.

Reigakusha has been invited to perform in major concert halls worldwide including the National Theatre and Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Seiji Ozawa Hall in Tanglewood, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Symphony Center in Chicago, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the British Museum in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Philharmonic Hall in Cologne and the Philharmonie de Paris.

http://www.reigakusha.com
https://www.facebook.com/reigakusha

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