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Izumi Kimura & Gerry Hemingway

“...this duo has forged an effervescent and deeply engaging partnership. ‘Kairos’ demonstrates that music can link effortlessly across time, genres, and any preconceptions in the hands of the right performers.”
Sammy Stein / Platinum Mind

The Cooler at The Complex, Mary's Abbey, Smithfield, Dublin 7.
Sunday October 22nd, doors 7pm, music 7:30pm


Following their acclaimed collaborations with bassist Barry Guy, including the album 'Silent Illuminations', pianist Izumi Kimura and percussionist Gerry Hemingway have joined forces again for a new duo album 'Kairos'. An exploration and conversation in improvisation, the duo play, explore and support each others' ideas, streaming from melodic moments to powerfully reflective minimalist moments. Both draw out a range of sound from their instruments to bring the listeners into new worlds, including preparations on the piano and melodic use of drumkit, blending exquisitely for textures and scenes which transport their audiences.

IMC are delighted to present this duo again in Dublin at The Cooler.

Izumi Kimura
is a highly acclaimed practitioner of contemporary piano music, improviser, and educator. She has performed extensively throughout Ireland and abroad as a solo, orchestral and chamber musician, and has worked with some of the leading performers and ensembles from both disciplines of classical and jazz, including RTE Symphony Orchestra, RTE Concert Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Michael D’arcy, Ioana Petcu, Colan, Susan Doyle, Cora Venus Lunny, and many more from the world of classical music, and with jazz musicians including Tommy Halferty, Ronan Guilfoyle, Michael Buckley, Joe O'Callaghan, Oki Itaru, Makoto Sato, Benoít Delbecq, Sarah Buechi, Fuzzy Logic Ensemble and more.

Gerry Hemingway
is one of the most radical and respected improvisers working today and is an internationally recognized master of his field. An American percussionist/ composer/ visual artist/ educator, who resides in Switzerland, Hemingway’s professional career spans over 40 years and spreads across the world. However, very rarely does Hemingway perform a highly evolved improvised music concert in a Classical music conservatoire, therefore this concert on 22nd October with Izumi Kimura will be an exceptional opportunity to appreciate both these masters at work.

Both Hemingway and Kimura traverse regularly the permeable boundaries supposedly separating composer from performer, and the results of such multi-dimensional activity is readily apparent as piano and percussion in scintillatingly spacious dialogue send the intriguingly titled “Dendrochronology” wafting and shimmering into existence…. Best though, and a masterful programming choice, is the concluding “Circadian Twilight.” In a way, it returns to the disc’s opening aesthetic and distills it, but it also shares modal space with the preceding spiritual. It’s basically a descent, a quick burst of tone and timbre sloping gradually downward. As its diminuendo makes its shimmering way toward silence, there’s a sense of completion, a winning circularity that unifies a really fine and excellently recorded disc.
Marc Medwin / Point of Departure on the duo album 'Kairos'.
More About this Artist

“Dublin based Japanese pianist lzumi Kimura and Connecticut born, Switzerland based percussionist/vocalist Gerry Hemingway have recorded previously with Barry Guy, but Kairos is their first duo effort. While each brought a piece to this session, most of it is jointly credited, but it does not sound like a product of free improvisation so much as an investigation in how each can support the other’s strengths. Even in free moments, the pianist is inexorably drawn to melodies, which Hemingway abets with complementary tonal lines on his vibes and drum kit. And Kimura, who combines preparations with conventional keyboard sounds, uses a staccato attack to reinforce the drummer’s intricate constructions. lt’s a complementary partnership.”
Bill Meyer / Jazz & Improv – The Wire

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