After 36 years working with NPR, former Southwest Correspondent (and our occasional KUT officemate) John Burnett retired a little over two years ago. Needing something to do, he created World Music Encounters, which gave him a way to pursue two loves: international music and interviewing interesting people.
“World Music Encounters is a project of Saint David’s Episcopal Church,” Burnett says, “to expose Austinites to international music that they may not be familiar with. And the great thing is, is that most of the musicians we’re booking [live in] Austin and surrounding areas, and they come from West Africa and the Middle East and all over South America and Central America and Mexico, India… And we’re giving them the stage in our beautiful Gothic church in middle of downtown Austin. And it features an interview segment where I talk to them about their music where it came from, their journey to Austin, their instruments… and so it’s an international music experience in the heart of Austin.”
As a retirement job, live music production turns out to be kind of a lot of work, Burnett says. “I needed something to do after I retired from NPR after 36 years and, and boy, this has been a lot of work. We went from 9 concerts the first season to 4 concerts this season. And then we’re gonna continue for at least one more season with probably 5 concerts, but yeah, it’s the first time I’ve ever worn this hat before and you know, producing and marketing and booking a series like this is just a hell of a lot of work. But a labor of love.”
As season two of World Music Encounters winds down, Burnett is planning something special. “This concert, which we’re calling ‘Soundscapes of Japan,’ will close out our second season,” he says. “It’s gonna be on Sunday, April 27th from 5 to 7 p.m. at our downtown church. ‘Soundscapes of Japan,’ will feature two world class Japanese artists who are not from anywhere close to Austin. Zenyōji Keisuke is coming from Tokyo in his first ever trip to the United States, and he plays an instrument called a shakuhachi, which is a centuries-old bamboo flute, a traditional instrument. And he’s just a big deal. He’s a very big deal in Japan – he’s like the Wynton Marsalis of the shakuhachi, and he plays music that is just hauntingly beautiful. It’s derived from Buddhist monks who played these bamboo flutes centuries ago as a form of a blowing meditation. It’s really kind of dreamlike.”
Zenyōji will play a 45 minute set, followed by an interview with Burnett and then a second set of Japanese music, this one from Sumie Kaneko, who is based in New York and who Burnett also describes as ‘a big deal.’
“She is really known for an innovative use of traditional Japanese instruments in her own compositions in a jazz context,” he say. “She’s played at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Blue Note in New York City… and she’ll be accompanied by a local rhythm section, a couple of fantastic jazz players, Rique Pantoja on piano and John Fremgen on bass. And so we’re going to go from centuries-old Japanese music to very contemporary Japanese music played on traditional instruments but in a really modern context. and we’re really excited about just all of the centuries we’ll be covering in this concert.”
