Tomoko Sugawara is a harpist from

Tokyo, Japan Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

who grew up playing classical and

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

harp before learning to play the

kugo The () is a Chinese plucked string instrument. In ancient China, the term came to refer to three different musical instruments: a zither and two different types of harp. Today, usually refers the modern '' concert harp'', which was invente ...

angular harp Angular harp is a category of musical instruments in the Hornbostel-Sachs system of musical instrument classification. It describes a harp in which "the neck makes a sharp angle with the resonator," the two arms forming an "open" harp. The har ...

. With

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

professor Bo Lawergren, whom she met at a kugo museum exhibit in

Nara, Japan is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Nara Prefecture has a population of 1,321,805 and has a geographic area of . Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Osaka Prefecture to the northwest, Wakayam ...

she engineered a fully working model of a kugo and hired American harp builder Bill Campbell to construct it. After adjusting to the soft sound of the model, she recorded a CD on

Motéma Music Motéma Music is a jazz and world music record label in the United States. It was founded in 2003 in San Francisco Bay Area. This record label’s catalog spans genres, cultures, and generations and has received Grammy recognition for over twen ...

called '' Along the Silk Road'', released in 2010, which was a nominee for the Independent Music Awards in the Traditional/World category. She worked with

flutist The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

Robert Dick Robert Dick (January 1811 – 24 December 1866), was a Scottish geologist and botanist. Life He was born at Tullibody, in Clackmannanshire. His father was an officer of excise in nearby Alloa. At the age of thirteen, after receiving a good ...

and bendir and darabukka player Ozan Aksöy for pieces composed by Kikuko Masumoto, Stephen Dydo (based on music from the

Tang Dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdom ...

), Quţh al-Din al-Shīrāzī (1236-1311, Iran), Robert Lombardo, Amir Mahyar Tafreshipour, and Sugawara's own arrangements of works by

Alfonso X Alfonso X (also known as the Wise, es, el Sabio; 23 November 1221 – 4 April 1284) was King of Castile, León and Galicia from 30 May 1252 until his death in 1284. During the election of 1257, a dissident faction chose him to be king of Germ ...

Biography

Sugawara began playing Irish harp at age 12, then moved to the concert harp at age 16. She graduated from Tokyo University of Fine Arts with the concert harp as her main instrument. She began her work with the kugo in 1991. She has performed recitals of both concert harp and kugo at the

World Harp Congress The World Harp Congress is a private nonprofit organization founded in 1981 as an outgrowth of the International Harp Weeks held in The Netherlands for twenty years under the leadership of Phia Berghout and Maria Korchinska. The organization ...

(in Prague and Amsterdam),

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universi ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

, and

The British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docume ...

References

*Gallafent, Alex.
Harpist Tomoko Sugawara
" Public Radio International's ''The World'', May 3, 2010.

External links

Official SiteTomoko Sugawara
at

Living people Japanese harpists Musicians from Tokyo Year of birth missing (living people) Motéma Music artists {{Japan-musician-stub