TETSU SAITOH (Double bass player, composer)

Born in Tokyo, JAPAN October 27, 1955. He has been involving himself with dance, Butoh, theatre, fine arts, visual arts, poetry, calligraphy, Japanese traditional music, court music,Noh theatre, classical and contemporary music, tango especially Astor Piazzolla’s music, jazz, improvised music, Korean and Asian shamanism. His activity is not only performing with musicians and artists, but also producing some projects, e.g. "EURACIAN ECHOES" which aims for joining Europe and Asia, in Korea, Singapore and Japan, "OMBAK HITAM" for the opening act for Fukuoka Asian Museum. In 1994 he was invited to the Avignon International Contrabass Festival as a guest soloist. Since 1994 he has often visited Europe and played with Barre Phillips, Michel Doneda, Le Quan Ninh, and others. In 1995 he collaborated a music and dance performance at the exhibition of works by Magdalena Avakanowicz in Warsaw, Poland. In 2000 and 2001 Kanagawa philharmonic orchestra invited him as a producer, a composer and a soloist for the concert of two double concertos. He also works as a jury for dance competition, a lecturer at SOPHIA University, and joined some workshops for handicapped people. In 2003 he joined the International Society of Bassists convention at Richmond as a presenter, in 2004,2006, joined the Hawaii International Double Bass Festival. In 2006 was invited to CrossSound music festival in Alaska as a featured artist. In 2007 was invited to Mosaic festival in Singapore. Started an independent label TRAVESSIA.