Asian Meeting Festival 2016

In 2014, Japanese musician / composer Otomo Yoshihide initiated Ensembles Asia / Asian Music Network by inviting Yuen Chee Wai from Singapore and Hong Kong-based dj sniff (Takuro Mizuta Lippit) as Project Directors. The project's aim was to identify key figures in Asian independent music and to cultivate a new network among these musicians. Asian Meeting Festival 2015 featured a diverse group of musicians from South East Asia, many playing for the first time in Japan, to a sold-out crowd in Tokyo and Kyoto. Following this success, Asian Meeting Festival 2016 will expand its program to various venues in three cities of Japan and featuring a wider range of musicians not only from South East Asia and Japan but from also Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea. The program will include concerts, screening of a music documentary film from Thailand, and numerous talk sessions. Every night, musicians coming from vastly different backgrounds will play in multiple formations of small and large ensembles. However our goal is not to try to impose a harmonious or unified idea of music, but rather to explore a form of music where each can exist on their own terms, and every musician can make their own decision on what is the best music that can be made at each given moment.