Celtic Noh [At the Hawk's Well] (The Hawk Princess)

What is Celtic Noh [At the Hawk's Well] (The Hawk Princess)?

Cast

[Noh]
Hawk Princess (Shite-kata) : Gensho Umewaka
Old man(Shite-kata) : Yoshimasa Kanze
Cu Chulainn (Kyo-gen-kata) : Norishige Yamamoto

Whistle : Rokuro-Byoue Fujita
Small Hand Drum : Genjiro Okura
Large Hand Drum : Hirotada Kamei
Base Drum : Yuichiro Hayashi

Prompter :
Yasuharu Odagiri
Mitsuru Nagashima

Noh chorus:
Masamichi Yamazaki
Masaki Umano
Naotaka Kakutou
Shintaro Ban
Takayuki Matsuyama
Kengo Tanimoto
Kohei Kawaguchi
Seigo Mikuriya
Norihide Yamamoto
Rintaro Yamamoto

[Celtic Choir]
Anuna

< Male Singers >
Michael McGlynn
Francis Flood
Nick Stoppel
Sam Kreidenweis
Donal Kearney
Zachary Trouton
Jan Kuhar

< Female Singers >
Dominique Cunningham
Miriam Blennerhassett
Andrea Delaney
Rachel Thompson
Sara Di Bella
Hannah Traynor

*Change of Base Drum performers: Motonori Kanze → Yuichiro Hayashi (2017.1.15)

Profile

http://umewakanoh.exblog.jp/

Gensho Umewaka (National treasure Noh Actor)
One of the professional Noh actors of the Umewaka Family, a branch of one of shite-kata (main role) schools of Noh, or Kanze School. Gensho is the national treasure and most popular Noh master. He is expanding the possibility of Noh through a lot of projects and collaborations with other genre artists.

ANUNA Official Site
http://www.anuna.ie/

ANUNA (Celtic Choir / 13 singers)
In 1987, ANUNA was founded by Irish composer Michael McGlynn. The concept is to revive the Medieval Irish music to present. ANUNA accompanied with "Riverdance" first world tour as the choir and became famous for worldwide. Since then, they have been regarded as the greatest Irish choir all over the world. They have done the Japan tour 5 times so far and all succeeded greatly.

Michael McGlynn
The leader and Artistic director of ANUNA. He takes part in arrangement, composition, stage direction of ANUNA and he himself is a great singer. He studied Irish literature at the university, so he has a great knowledge of Yests and Celtic Myth. Also, he is interested in Japanese culture and its commonality with Celtic ideology.

W.B. Yeats has been an enormous part of my life since as far back as I can remember. His writings have illuminated the Irish landscape and culture so uniquely and profoundly that his words seem to be a part of the beautiful countryside that he loved so much. My artistic journey as a composer over the last thirty years has been to find a way to explore, using the voices of Anuna, my own responses to the ancient beauty of Ireland.

Creating a music score that will combine so many elements is a daunting task. Noh is an ancient and powerful form, a complete dramatic presentation in itself with Gensho Umewaka playing the pivotal role of the hawk in this production. To this will be combined the words of Yeats to be sung by Anuna, and texts in Early Irish and Japanese. The group will represent the Spirit world that so deeply influences the atmosphere of this play.

When I met Gensho Umewaka in Japan for the first time I understood how profound this presentation was to be. His serenity and artistry has had a deep effect on the creation of the score that I have composed. The music represents elements of the Spirit world and the Natural world, surrounding the deep humanity of the story without intruding on the purity and truth inherent in the meaning of the play. This is a great and singular honour that I have been given.

Michael McGlynn