Midori Takada

Midori Takada (b. 1951) is a percussionist, composer and performance artist, whose output over the past 50 years weaves through solo, group and theatrical practices. Considered a rebel in the classical world of music, she debuted as soloist in 1978 with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, but later abandoned her Western classical training to study drumming in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire and Gamelan music of Indonesia, and composing works that incorporate the structures of traditional music. She has also worked with improvised music and appeared in productions by the world-renowned director Tadashi Suzuki. As an environmental musician, she has created soundscapes for the Art Institute of Chicago and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Her landmark album, Through The Looking Glass (1983) is considered an essential recording of minimalist music in chime with the peak period ambient and fourth world musics explored by Jon Hassell, Don Cherry and Brian Eno, but born of a distinctly Japanese ceremonial and meditative musical sensibility. The LP reissue sparked a series of sold out solo performances across Europe and the U.S., including the London Barbican, Paris Palais de Tokyo, The Kitchen in New York, and the Getty Centre in Los Angeles. Nearly 45 years after her first soloist performance with the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, by fate Takada began her collaboration with Jakob Bro with a 2022 commission by Pierre Boulez Saal, resulting in concerts in Berlin, Copenhagen, Osaka etc.