Anne Norman
Anne Norman is a performer, improviser, composer and teacher of shakuhachi based in Melbourne. She works as a freelance artist across music-theatre productions, solo and collaborative recitals, broadcasts and recording.
She has also undertaken a PhD on the intercultural reception of shakuhachi through the Department of Japanese Studies at Monash University.
After 14 years of training on western flute (B.Mus., University of Melbourne), Anne took up the shakuhachi in 1986 while living in Japan. In 1988 she returned to Australia to complete a Masters in Ethnomusicology at Monash, then spent a further two years in Japan on a Japanese Government grant, studying shakuhachi performance at the Tokyo University of Fine Art and Music. Her teachers are Nakamura Shindo of the Ueda school in Kobe, Tajima Tadashi of the Watazumi-do tradition in Osaka, and Yamaguchi Goro of the Kinko school in Tokyo.
She has performed in Japan and Australia with musicians from traditional and contemporary Japanese music, European art music, jazz, avant-garde and other cultural heritages. She has composed, improvised and performed for theatre and dance, and has collaborated with visual artists and poets.
In 1993 she collaborated on the CD Jouissance, which recontextualises the music of Hildegard and Abelard by interweaving Gregorian chant with shakuhachi, double bass, Buddhist bells and other percussion. She is artistic coordinator of the group Nadoya, which has developed hybrid arts work fusing music and movement art (neo-butoh) with interactive technology, supported by the Australia Council for the Arts.
Artist's website: annenorman.com
Anne Norman is featured on the following titles
The Prospect and Bower of Bliss
The Prospect and Bower of Bliss presents two song cycles by Australian composer Johanna Selleck, setting poetry by Aphra Behn (1640–1689) and Melbourne poet Graeme Ellis (1944–).