Naomi Utamakura
a singer, composer and music producer

In 1997 Naomi Utamakura started making and releasing a CD series “Miyabiuta – Manyoshu Spelled with Music” after realizing an extraordinary power of words contained in Japanese poems. She is a pioneer of joining the “waka” poetry with music. In 2002, on the basis of “Manyoshu” collection, “waka” of “Kojiki” and “Nihonshoki - Chronicles of Japan”, she created a new genre of stage performance in which she introduces wisdom of ancient times. She called the genre “Wakageki – Historical Stories Narrated by Music and Images”, and performs it on Japanese stages and abroad. She gained an opinion of an artist who makes the “Japaneseness” understandable for western audience in Europe. Naomi Utamakura rediscovers history of many regions in Japan, and tries to evolve a core of wisdom hidden in it, through implementation of her project “Making Alive Historical Structures” which she established more than 10 years ago.

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