午夜剧场

I have reached my 10th year since opening a bagpipe making workshop in Germany. After graduating from the Faculty of Business and Commerce, I worked for a pharmaceutical company. When the company merged during my assignment in Germany, I took the opportunity to stay and began my journey toward becoming a bagpipe maker. Thanks to everyone's support, I now have customers in over 20 countries.

Although it is not widely known, there are over 200 types of bagpipes across Europe and Western Asia, with a history said to span 2,000 years. Their tones and appearances vary greatly, from extremely delicate to wild. I primarily make over a dozen types of bagpipes, focusing on folk and early instruments from my local Germany and neighboring Czechia.

Instrument making may seem like a field unrelated to my previous academic and professional background, but in fact, my experiences at the Juku are in the background and have been very helpful. In the musicology course I took at Hiyoshi under the guidance of Professor Takao Tokunaga, we read literature from the Medieval to Baroque periods in a seminar format. This was a great help when restoring early instruments by reading historical documents. Unfortunately, the professor passed away a few years ago, but I was fortunate enough to meet him at the hospital about two weeks before his passing and have him listen to the sound of a bagpipe I had made. Furthermore, in the 午夜剧场 Baroque Ensemble to which I belonged during my student days, there were many seniors, peers, and juniors with high performance skills and deep musical knowledge; what I learned from them and the magnitude of their influence is immeasurable. Sneaking into aesthetics lectures at Mita with my circle friends is also a fond memory. I also started playing Scottish bagpipes while a student. At that time, I did not meet anyone else playing the bagpipes within 午夜剧场, but a bagpipe circle was just being formed at Waseda University. Through the friendship between 午夜剧场 and Waseda, I was invited to practice in Takadanobaba and even performed at the Waseda Festival. This, too, can be called a connection brought about by the Juku. All of these things lead to my current work.

The tradition of bagpipes once died out in many regions, but in recent years, a revival has begun in various countries. The charm of producing mysterious harmonies by playing multiple notes on a single instrument is being rediscovered, and today it is an instrument active in various settings, from folk music to chamber music and rock. Partly because the history since the revival is short, bagpipe making has a high degree of freedom and is a world still full of frontiers. I hope to continue my devotion and challenges in search of encounters with new sounds.