Ikebana Performance with accompanied music by Slava Grigoryan.

Hanadayori Night: Ho Chi Minh City

国際的なミュージシャンと華道家との稀有なコラボ。２４年度は国際的なギター奏者、スラバ・グリゴリャンが登場！会場は豪州でも最高のコンサート会場。

Hanadayori is a Japanese word that means the flowers you have been waiting for have finally arrived.

Step into a realm of beauty and tranquillity with a live Ikebana Performance by Shoso Shimbo, to the accompaniment of Slava Grigoryan's solo guitar. Shoso finds the perfect place for each element, guided by centuries-old principles of Japanese aesthetics. As the form of the installation gradually emerges, Grigoryan's guitar infuses the space with a sense of harmony and contemplation. 

The collaboration between Shimbo's artistry and Grigoryan's musical prowess invites audiences to immerse themselves in a moment of pure serenity. Through the fusion of Ikebana and guitar, this performance offers a glimpse into the profound connection between humanity and the natural world, where beauty blooms in both sight and sound.

Metascent, the major sponsor of the Melbourne Ikebana Festival, has released a new perfume suite, the Hanadayori Collection, to celebrate and commemorate the Hanadayori experience.

Slava Grigoryan: Regarded as a wizard of the guitar, Slava has forged a prolific reputation as a classical guitar virtuoso. Collaborations have played a huge part in Grigoryan’s career, most notable of these are in the trio with legendary USA guitarist Ralph Towner and Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel and the duo with brother Leonard Grigoryan. 

He has received 4 ARIA awards and an incredible 24 ARIA Award nominations. Two of his ARIA Awards were in consecutive years for his project Bach Cello Suites Vols I & II. His international touring schedule has seen him perform throughout Europe, Asia, and the USA, as well as more exotic performances in Brazil, South Africa, India and the Middle East. Slava is the Artistic Director of the Adelaide Guitar Festival, a position he has held since 2009. 

For this special performance, Slava will perform an eclectic selection of works displaying his love of music spanning centuries, continents and genres.

‘A guitar player of uncommon originality and authority. Musicality, expressivity and daring ... a singular talent.’ – The New York Times

‘... a truly dazzling and brilliant performance – go and see him if you have the opportunity, he is one of the very best talents to have emerged in recent years.’ – Classical Guitar Magazine

Ikebana Performance by Shoso Shimbo with Paul Grabowsky AO at Melbourne Recital Centre, September 2022.

Ikebana Performance & Contemporary Art

Shoso Shimbo, PhD

Ikebana. One of the most important premises in the modernist art movements was to depict objects as they really are rather than the way we see them. Cubism and Abstract Art were early attempts to create a new order in the twentieth-century art. 

A similar but more meditative view was expressed in Senno Kuden (1542), one of the early texts on ikebana. Senno stated that ikebana should be created based on “omokage” of such materials as flowers and leaves. Omokage is not the image we see but is more the conceptual essence of the materials. Just like some Cubist artists moved their focus from visual representation to conceptual representation, ikebana artists move beyond the visual aspect of the flowers and seek to grasp their essence through meditation. 

Senno also said that ikebana as a product represents “onozukara naru sugata”, the essence of the universe. Just like Abstract Art can be seen to represent virtues such as order, purity, simplicity and spirituality, ikebana stands for essence of the universe, which I call Wa: Fluid Harmony in my performance. Ikebana in this sense is abstract assemblage rather than floral decoration.           

Ikebana Performance. Inspired by Abstract Expressionism, artists such as Georges Mathieu and Kazuo Shiraga used performance to show that the artist’s creative act is equally important to the artwork produced. 

Ikebana performance similarly aims to shift attention from the final piece of art to the artist’s actions. However, the process of creation is not based on a fixed plan. Art exists in real space and real time and Grigoryan's music becomes part of the materials as Shoso brings the piece together. The live music constantly transforms the whole composition of the work. Such transformation shares an aspect of chess that fascinated both Marcel Duchamp and Lewis Carroll. The emerging work is a dynamic matrix, an interplay of symmetries and asymmetries in harmony with the music.