Yasuaki Shimizu Composer, saxophonist, music producer Musical boundaries are no barrier to Yasuaki Shimizu, whose forty-year career spans an impressively broad range of genres. He is recognized for his crossover albums, film soundtracks, and high-profile installations and collaborations. His peerless back catalog reached a wider audience following the 2015 reissue of his band Mariah’s 1983 classic Utakata no Hibi, a
masterful hybrid of Japanese folk and pop idioms. Also reissued in 2017, cult
favorite Kakashi playfully weaves together minimal dub and musique concrète. In 2018 Shimizu took these reissued albums on a six-nation European tour that included the Roskilde Festival, one of continent’s largest music events.
In the mid-1990s, Shimizu’s passion for the music of J.S. Bach surfaced in two groundbreaking recordings of the entire Cello Suites—the first-ever tenor saxophone interpretations of these pieces. Shimizu has also recorded as Yasuaki Shimizu & Saxophonettes, and in 2006 he relaunched the Saxophonettes as a saxophone quintet. Following the release of Pentatonica (2007), an album of original and traditional pentatonic tunes, Shimizu returned his focus to Bach, releasing his arrangement—for five saxophones and four contrabasses—of the Goldberg Variations in 2015.
A prolific composer for film and TV, Shimizu has produced soundtracks for, among many others, the Oscar-nominated documentary Cutie and the Boxer (2013), which won Outstanding Achievement for Original Music Score at the Cinema Eye Honors.
Shimizu’s boundary-breaking approach to music goes beyond composition and performance. He views physical space as an extension of his instrument, and often “plays the space,” making use of unique acoustic environments in which to record and play.
Macie Stewart is a Chicago based, multi-instrumentalist, composer/arranger, songwriter, and improviser. Stewart primarily works with piano, violin, voice, guitar, and synthesizers. From a very young age Macie was drawn towards sound; learning to communicate with music while simultaneously learning to communicate with words. Stewart’s experience as an open collaborator and composer in their own right has led their music to become fluid and expansive- drawing on all that has come before while intentionally searching for something new.
Lia Kohl is a cellist, composer, and sound artist based in Chicago. Trained as a cellist, she also incorporates synthesizers, field recordings, toy instruments and radios into her work, searching for a balance between virtuosity and curiosity. She gravitates towards sound practices which reveal and speak to their time and place: field recording, improvisation, radio broadcast and transmission. She often focuses on mundane or pedestrian sounds – sounds which often go unnoticed or under-documented, searching for the profound, unknown, or beautiful in everyday life.
Whitney Johnson is an artist living in Chicago. Currently, she composes, performs, and installs multi-channel sound with viola, sine waves, Max/MSP, organ, synthesizers, vocalization, tape looping, and field recording.
Mon Mar 24 2025
8:00 PM (Doors 7:00 PM)
$30.00 - $270.00
Ages 17+
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Yasuaki Shimizu with Macie Stewart/Lia Kohl/Whitney Johnson
$30.00 - $270.00 Ages 17+
Yasuaki Shimizu Composer, saxophonist, music producer Musical boundaries are no barrier to Yasuaki Shimizu, whose forty-year career spans an impressively broad range of genres. He is recognized for his crossover albums, film soundtracks, and high-profile installations and collaborations. His peerless back catalog reached a wider audience following the 2015 reissue of his band Mariah’s 1983 classic Utakata no Hibi, a
masterful hybrid of Japanese folk and pop idioms. Also reissued in 2017, cult
favorite Kakashi playfully weaves together minimal dub and musique concrète. In 2018 Shimizu took these reissued albums on a six-nation European tour that included the Roskilde Festival, one of continent’s largest music events.
In the mid-1990s, Shimizu’s passion for the music of J.S. Bach surfaced in two groundbreaking recordings of the entire Cello Suites—the first-ever tenor saxophone interpretations of these pieces. Shimizu has also recorded as Yasuaki Shimizu & Saxophonettes, and in 2006 he relaunched the Saxophonettes as a saxophone quintet. Following the release of Pentatonica (2007), an album of original and traditional pentatonic tunes, Shimizu returned his focus to Bach, releasing his arrangement—for five saxophones and four contrabasses—of the Goldberg Variations in 2015.
A prolific composer for film and TV, Shimizu has produced soundtracks for, among many others, the Oscar-nominated documentary Cutie and the Boxer (2013), which won Outstanding Achievement for Original Music Score at the Cinema Eye Honors.
Shimizu’s boundary-breaking approach to music goes beyond composition and performance. He views physical space as an extension of his instrument, and often “plays the space,” making use of unique acoustic environments in which to record and play.
Macie Stewart is a Chicago based, multi-instrumentalist, composer/arranger, songwriter, and improviser. Stewart primarily works with piano, violin, voice, guitar, and synthesizers. From a very young age Macie was drawn towards sound; learning to communicate with music while simultaneously learning to communicate with words. Stewart’s experience as an open collaborator and composer in their own right has led their music to become fluid and expansive- drawing on all that has come before while intentionally searching for something new.
Lia Kohl is a cellist, composer, and sound artist based in Chicago. Trained as a cellist, she also incorporates synthesizers, field recordings, toy instruments and radios into her work, searching for a balance between virtuosity and curiosity. She gravitates towards sound practices which reveal and speak to their time and place: field recording, improvisation, radio broadcast and transmission. She often focuses on mundane or pedestrian sounds – sounds which often go unnoticed or under-documented, searching for the profound, unknown, or beautiful in everyday life.
Whitney Johnson is an artist living in Chicago. Currently, she composes, performs, and installs multi-channel sound with viola, sine waves, Max/MSP, organ, synthesizers, vocalization, tape looping, and field recording.
masterful hybrid of Japanese folk and pop idioms. Also reissued in 2017, cult
favorite Kakashi playfully weaves together minimal dub and musique concrète. In 2018 Shimizu took these reissued albums on a six-nation European tour that included the Roskilde Festival, one of continent’s largest music events.
In the mid-1990s, Shimizu’s passion for the music of J.S. Bach surfaced in two groundbreaking recordings of the entire Cello Suites—the first-ever tenor saxophone interpretations of these pieces. Shimizu has also recorded as Yasuaki Shimizu & Saxophonettes, and in 2006 he relaunched the Saxophonettes as a saxophone quintet. Following the release of Pentatonica (2007), an album of original and traditional pentatonic tunes, Shimizu returned his focus to Bach, releasing his arrangement—for five saxophones and four contrabasses—of the Goldberg Variations in 2015.
A prolific composer for film and TV, Shimizu has produced soundtracks for, among many others, the Oscar-nominated documentary Cutie and the Boxer (2013), which won Outstanding Achievement for Original Music Score at the Cinema Eye Honors.
Shimizu’s boundary-breaking approach to music goes beyond composition and performance. He views physical space as an extension of his instrument, and often “plays the space,” making use of unique acoustic environments in which to record and play.
Macie Stewart is a Chicago based, multi-instrumentalist, composer/arranger, songwriter, and improviser. Stewart primarily works with piano, violin, voice, guitar, and synthesizers. From a very young age Macie was drawn towards sound; learning to communicate with music while simultaneously learning to communicate with words. Stewart’s experience as an open collaborator and composer in their own right has led their music to become fluid and expansive- drawing on all that has come before while intentionally searching for something new.
Lia Kohl is a cellist, composer, and sound artist based in Chicago. Trained as a cellist, she also incorporates synthesizers, field recordings, toy instruments and radios into her work, searching for a balance between virtuosity and curiosity. She gravitates towards sound practices which reveal and speak to their time and place: field recording, improvisation, radio broadcast and transmission. She often focuses on mundane or pedestrian sounds – sounds which often go unnoticed or under-documented, searching for the profound, unknown, or beautiful in everyday life.
Whitney Johnson is an artist living in Chicago. Currently, she composes, performs, and installs multi-channel sound with viola, sine waves, Max/MSP, organ, synthesizers, vocalization, tape looping, and field recording.
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