AN innovative music group will visit a Tyne Valley town on its 30th anniversary UK tour.
Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers are the UK’s only professional touring taiko group and Europe’s most established performing company in the traditional Japanese art form.
The tour, which will come to Hexham, involves dynamic choreography and heart-pounding rhythms contrasting with atmospheric soundscapes.
The group is widely recognised as the groundbreaking pioneer of the art form, thrilling audiences at thousands of performances worldwide and now returning with its first major UK tour in almost five years.
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Miyuki Williams, one of the group's founding members, said: "A Mugenkyo concert is very varied, with a lot of light and shade, and also theatrical elements. Some of our songs are very high-energy with fast powerful rhythms.
"Some songs are slower and very graceful to watch, with highly choreographed and synchronised movement. Some songs involve quieter percussion instruments, such as gongs and bells and we often perform with special guests, dancers and other musicians. The concert is a whole experience in itself."
Mugenkyo has collaborated on the ambitious “World of Gods” with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, filming for the Hollywood film “Tin Soldier” in Greece with Jamie Foxx and Robert DeNiro, a two-week run at the World Expo in Dubai, the BBC TV Tokyo Olympics, a 26-date run at the Adelaide Fringe and the “Fire & Light” site-specific project.
Mugenkyo has released six albums and three concert DVDs, making them the most artistically prolific taiko group outside Japan.
Along with the group's main touring work at theatres and concert halls, Mugenkyo also performs at large-scale events and festivals at home and abroad. They have appeared on television programmes including the Brit Awards, the BBC's Last Night of the Proms, and filmed in India for Bollywood.
Neil Mackie, another founding member, said: "This may sound like a cliché, but Taiko appeals to absolutely everyone, and cuts across every musical boundary. Mugenkyo performs at every kind of music festival - jazz, classical, dance, rock, folk - and wherever we’ve played we’ve found it’s always popular amongst audiences.
"At our concerts we draw from a wide age range - from young clubbers to parents with their children, to typical middle-aged concert-goers, to old-age pensioners. As they say in Japan, Taiko really is the music of the people."
The group will perform the tour named "In Time" at the Queen's Hall, Hexham on May 17 from 7.30pm.
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