Workshop at Improtech Paris-Tokyo 2024

Improtech is an interdisciplinary workshop and music festival bringing together actors of research and creation from all over the world fostering musical improvisation in interaction with digital intelligences, in an unwavering approach of human-machine co-creativity.

After praised editions in New York, Philadelphia, Athens and Uzeste, Improtech Paris-Tokyo will land down in Tokyo, the sizzling japanese metropolis on july 29. This year, Improtech is associated with a momentous event, the Max Summer School, which gathers every year a large community of computer music enthusiasts at the Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai) in the Musical Creativity Department at Senju campus

Highlights

This edition of Improtech in Tokyo will welcome a number of truly exceptional personalities, including celebrated multi-award jazzman Steve Lehman, Jim O’Rourke from the legendary Sonic Youth group and avant-garde beacon, Joëlle Léandre, the double-bass diva with life time achievement award, contemporary classical composer Lara Morciano exploring the limits of hybrid acoustic/digital composition with composer and computer music designer Jose-Miguel Fernandez, the immense Malagasy zither virtuoso Justin Vali, Jean-marc Montera, avant-garde guitarist specializing in free improvisation and sound experimentation, Turner Williams Jr the the spirited musician playing the syncretic orient-occident instrument shahibaaja.

Miller Puckette, Inventor of the Max software system and Venice Silver Lion for his life in computer music, also graces us with a keynote lecture and a musical performance in duo with the celebrated electronic musician Irwin.

The Who/Men from Ircam (Marco Fiorini, Mikhail Malt, Gérard Assayag) along with Marc Chemillier will create a sonic space thanks to the cocreative AI tools from the REACH project.

As usual in Improtech series, the floor is wide open to artists from the host country. This year we welcome Suguru Goto, new media artist and director of Geidai Musical Creativity Dpt with young composers from Geidai Ko Sahara, Takeyoshi Mori, Nicolas Brochec ; Michiyo Yagi, renewing the art of the Koto in the electronic esthetic, Mari Kimura, visionary virtuoso violinist creating her own gestural interaction systems, Akira Sakata, a cherished veteran of the japanese free scene, Tamami Tono celebrated Shō player, Gagaku and computer music composer, Nao Tokui both musician and researcher exploring AI potentialities in electronic music and live coding.

Workshops and lectures will cover a vast panorama of advanced machine learning and machine listening, gestural and spatial control, software environments, Creative Artificial Intelligence, including inevitable esthetical and epistemological questions, notably with Pr Shlomo Dubnov, world-class specialist in Machine Learning and Information Theory and several members of the Ircam and Geidai REACH project group.

In addition to the regular programme, a truly exceptional event will enlight this year’s Improtech with a a performance at Konnoh Hachimangu Shinto Shrine in Shibuya, a one thousand year old cultural milestone linked to the Shibuya clan and Japan’s tumultuous medieval history, also known as one of Tokyo’s rarest early Edo architectural jewels. The shrine is also associated to the life of the great writer Yukio Mishima who was a regular here.

Composer Georges Bloch will perform in the shrine with the outstanding Butoh dancer Taketeru Kudo who renews the Butoh genre and opens it to contemporary music, along with the bass player Takashi Seo, a major actor of the Tokyo avant-garde who unleashes all the power of free impro on his instrument.