Improvised Music from Japan is a website and record label.
The website was originally known as Japanese Free Improvisers. As its name suggests, it concentrates on Japanese and Japan-based improvisers, particularly free improvisers.
In December 2001, a compilation box-set, also called Improvised Music from Japan, was released to mark the fifth anniversary of the website. It was a 10 CD collection of previously unissued material from a variety of Japanese musicians (some of them collaborating with Europeans and Americans). The artists featured on the release are:
- Tetuzi Akiyama
- Big Picture (band)
- Haco
- Shoji Hano
- Junji Hirose
- Ryoji Hojito
- Yoshimitsu Ichiraku
- Kazuo Imai
- Incapacitants
- Atsuhiro Ito
- Utah Kawasaki
- Kyoko Kuroda
- Brett Larner
- Sachiko M
- Toshimaru Nakamura
- Takehito Nakazato
- Mitsuru Nasuno
- Masahiko Okura
- Aki Onda
- Yasuhiro Otani
- Yoshihide Otomo
- Tetsu Saitoh
- Michihiro Sato
- Skist
- Taku Sugimoto
- Tamaru
- Yumiko Tanaka
- Tsuguto Tsunoda
- Kazuhisa Uchihashi
- Michiyo Yagi
- Seiichi Yamamoto
- Tetsuro Yasunaga
- Ami Yoshida
- Yasuhiro Yoshigaki
The label has since released a number of other records featuring similar artists:
- Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama and guests, Meeting at Off Site Vol. 1 (IMJ-501, April 2002)
- Otomo Yoshihide, Ensemble Cathode (IMJ-502, July 2002)
- Kaffe Matthews, Andrea Neumann and Sachiko M, In Case of Fire Take the Stairs (IMJ-503, December 2002)
- Ami Yoshida, Tiger Thrush (IMJ-504, July 2003)
- Shoji Hano, 48 (IMJ-505, May 2003)
- Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama and guests, Meeting at Off Site Vol. 2 (IMJ-506, May 2003)
- Yumiko Tanaka, Tayutauta (IMJ-507, due January 2004)
- Raku Sugifatti (Radu Malfatti and Taku Sugimoto), Futatsu (IMJ-508/9, December 2003)
- Aki Onda, Bon Voyage! (IMJ-510, October 2003)
- Otomo Yoshihide, Park Je Chun and Mi Yeon, Loose Community (IMJ-511, December 2003)
- Peter Brötzmann and Shoji Hano, Funny Rat (IMJ-512, October 2003)
- Toshimaru Nakamura, Side Guitar (IMJ-513, December 2003)
- Han Bennink and Kazuo Imai, Across the Desert (IMJ-514, December 2003)
- Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama and guests, Meeting at Off Site Vol. 3 (IMJ-515, December 2003)
Other Japanese artists which could be considered free improvisers include:
- Kaoru Abe
- Masayuki Takayanagi
Famous quotes containing the words improvised, music and/or japan:
“Many a time I have seen my mother leap up from the dinner table to engage the swarming flies with an improvised punkah, and heard her rejoice and give humble thanks simultaneously that Baltimore was not the sinkhole that Washington was.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“I cannot say what poetry is; I know that our sufferings and our concentrated joy, our states of plunging far and dark and turning to come back to the world—so that the moment of intense turning seems still and universal—all are here, in a music like the music of our time, like the hero and like the anonymous forgotten; and there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“I do not know that the United States can save civilization but at least by our example we can make people think and give them the opportunity of saving themselves. The trouble is that the people of Germany, Italy and Japan are not given the privilege of thinking.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)