Leon Michener is a truly original pianist, known as the architect of the Klavikon system (a combination of amplification, feedback and analogue processing), in which he sculpts the feedback from the amplified piano soundboard.
In this unique encounter, he improvised on acoustic and processed piano, and clavichord, and with flautist Yukihiro Isso and drummer Mitsuhiro Kakihara, applying the space between the piano and the listeners as an ascetic counterpoint to the Noh musicians.
Photo: Mayumi Hirata
As Michener explains:
‘Creating something from nothing, using only the empty space between piano and speaker, and merely guiding the flow of sound like water, this way and that, trying to gently direct the undetectable, seemed to offer a perfect response to classical Noh theatre, with its concepts of ‘Ma’, the ‘empty space’ filled with potential’.
