Seasons of Japanese Culture

The festivals “Japanese Spring” and “Japanese Autumn” have been held in Kazakhstan annually since 2011. The festival participants are prominent performers of traditional, classical and jazz music from the Land of the Rising Sun and Kazakhstan.

The festival aims to demonstrate the audience the most brilliant examples of Japanese and Kazakh music, find similarities in cultures of our nations and support a creative interchange between Japanese and Kazakhstani musicians.

The festival entrance is always free of charge. It gives an opportunity to a wide range of listeners to visit these unique concerts.  

This project has a great educational value, as apart from concerts Japanese musicians also participate in meet-the-artist events and master classes organized for students of Almaty and Astana music colleges and conservatories, at which they tell about the history and distinctive features of Japanese national instruments and share their secrets of jazz and classical music performance with Kazakhstani students.

In different years the participants of the festivals from a Japanese side were:
Akikazu Nakamura (shakuhachi player), Toshiko Kuto (koto palyer), Ken Aiso (violinist), Kishi Mitsuaki jazz trio, Ayako Shirasaki jazz trio, the show-group of drummers “Yamato”, Kinohati (sakuhati player), Kitada Ryoichi (pianist) and Takeuchi Jun (violinist).

The festival audience gets to know both music and poetry of two countries. At concerts they have an opportunity to listen to Japanese haiku and tanka poems as well as Kazakh classical poetry. The poems are read by famous Kazakhstani theatre and film actors and actresses.
At one of the festivals there was an exhibition of famous Japanese and Kazakhstani photographers, where visitors could see interesting photos of picturesque nature of two countries.

From 2011 to 2018:

Degdar has organized 19 concerts, which have been visited by 20 000 people;
12 concerts of the festivals have been broadcast by the state-run TV stations “Bilim zhene Medeniet”, “Kazakh TV” (the TV audience coverage is the entire territory of Kazakhstan);
The foundation has conducted 11 master classes and meet-the-artist events that have been attended by 600 students of creative academic institution and art amateurs.

The organizers are the “Degdar” Humanitarian Foundation” and the JTI company.