What is PACIFIC CROSSINGS ?

We started Pacific Crossings Festival in Tokyo in 2004. The festival aims to blend two different music scenes that are developing in Japan and the United States in order to build a new common ground for the music in the Pacific region.

The festival has a background history in the past.  From 1980s to 90s, new music festival INTERLINK was held under the sponsorship of American Embassy. A number of American musicians including Kronos Quartet and Terry Riley were introduced to Japanese audience and gave a lasting influence to the music scene in Japan.

Pacific Crossings, although having taken over the direction of Interlink festival, will create a new place for the audience to directly experience the reality of the present time in which multiple thoughts and values exist together. It will be a place to hear the music that reflects the now and to face the real of the 21st century, being released from the constraints of technological innovations and so-called extension of human beings.

The Pacific Crossings committee ties up with American Embassy, Australian Embassy, and the 21st Century Museum, Kanazawa to present the festival this year, focusing on Australian American composer Percy Grainger. The concerts in Tokyo are held at Myonichikan, Jiyugakuen, which was designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright and built about eighty years ago. You will hear multiple musical sounds in the space created by Wright, who found a value of human life in an organic relationship to the Nature.