Otomo Yoshihide, a legend of the avant-garde & noise scene, a prominent Japanese multi-instrumentalist, guitarist, composer, and record producer, returns to Vilnius Jazz Festival after a 31-year hiatus with the most important project of his life.

Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band is the successor to the famous Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Quintet and Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Orchestra that grew out of it. The big band is also influenced by Otomo’s ensemble Oto Asobi no Kai and the experience of Bon Odori project at the festival in Fukushima, which started after the Great East Japan Earthquake. In 2012, Yoshihide was honoured with a Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts for Project FUKUSHIMA!, which covered various parts of Japan.

It is these musicians who recorded the soundtrack for the popular TV drama Amachan. The soundtrack was a commercial success, became a hit in Japan, and received the Japan Recording Award.

The music of Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band projects the imagination and versatility of the leader, as well as the individual style of the musicians. It shines with colourful timbres, the stylistic flexibility of the brass, the fiery drumming. And there is always an element of surprise that gives a strange, adventurous atmosphere. Yoshihide cheerfully emcees this unpredictable choir of improvisers.

Is it possible to maintain impeccable avant-garde credentials and be a pop culture phenomenon?, All about Jazz asked rhetorically after the release of the band’s first album, Live At Shinjuku Pit Inn. This is the case with Yoshihide, a voracious and adventurous explorer of the musical unknown. Released in 2015, the album reflects his many interests, from his admiration for Charlie Haden and Eric Dolphy to his desire to compose music for films and TV shows.

A few years ago, the big band’s second, this time studio, album Stone Stone Stone was issued by the new record label “Little Stone Records”. According to Otomo, the titles of the album and the label share a common idea. They were inspired by a post about political situation on Twitter: “We threw many small stones, and the mountain moved a little”.

Stone Stone Stone was recorded during a coronavirus pandemic. “At that time, I began to think that doing my usual job of making music in a fair manner was the same as throwing small stones. Let’s start by carefully making albums and labels one by one with the members we have been working with and the new people we have met. I created this work with such thoughts in mind at the Corona Disaster. […] I hope “Little Stone Records” will become a place where “throwing many small stones moves the mountain a little”, said the leader of the project.

Otomo Yoshihide radically transformed the field of improvised music, both in solo and group settings. Working in numerous genres and formats, he has led traditional and avant-garde jazz ensembles, composed mainstream film and television soundtracks, produced minimalist electro-acoustic music, deconstructed jazz and pop classics, and created work based on his ethnomusicology studies, incorporating traditional instruments and samples of music.

His compositions are surprisingly diverse in style. The multi-instrumentalist feels at home in free improvisation, noise and pop music. Otomo has been exploring electronic technologies for many years and has become one of the pioneers of electroacoustic improvisation. He has composed more than a hundred pieces of music for film, television and other visual projects. He also finds time to work with handicapped children.

As a child, he built his own radio and electronic oscillator, and in his teens he began creating sound collages by means of open-reel tape recorders. Otomo played in a rock band at school and became interested in free jazz as a teenager. He was born in Yokohama and later lived in Fukushima. At the age of 20, he went to Tokyo to learn from jazz guitarist Masayuki “Jojo” Takayanagi.

Fascinated by ethnic music at university, Yoshihide began studying instruments from the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and travelled to Hainan province in China to research the local musical culture. Back in Tokyo, he dove into free improvisation, playing at the Goodman Club with saxophonist Junji Hirose in addition to concurrent stints in the bands No Problem and ORT (with Kyoko Kuroda). Later he joined bassist Kato Hideki’s Player Piano.

In the 1990s, Yoshihide became best known as the leader of Ground Zero, an experimental rock band that combined thrash energy, sound collages, 1960s pop music, Peking opera and many other styles, using turntables, electronics and traditional Japanese instruments.

Following Ground Zero dissolution, Otomo’s style changed radically – his minimalist projects I.S.O. and Filament (both with long-time collaborator Sachiko M) made him known as a master of electroacoustic improvisation. He has also participated in projects such as PantyChrist and Microcosmos (with Tenko), and recorded with Kenny Millions, Günter Müller, Voice Crack, turntable virtuosos Martin Tétreault and Christian Marclay.

A new phase of his exploration began in 2001 with the formation of New Jazz Quintet, in which Yoshihide focused on guitar. This group consisted of Japanese jazz luminaries. In 2005, the group evolved into New Jazz Orchestra.

Yoshihide has collaborated with many of the greats of improvised music, including John Zorn, Yamatsuka Eye (Boredoms), Derek Bailey, Christian Marclay, Jim O’Rourke, Evan Parker, avant-rock master Hoppy Kamiyama, Scandinavian trio The Thing and its drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, French electroacoustic pioneer Luc Ferrari, released solo and trio albums with Hiroaki Mizutani and Yasuhiro Yoshigaki, as well as Roger Turner, and noise pioneers Hijokaidan.

Lately, Yoshihide has been keen on forming collectives in which professionals improvise with music amateurs. In 2017, he was appointed the artistic director of the Sapporo International Arts Festival, and since 2014 he has served as the director of the project Ensembles Asia, which he conceived.