Naoto Segawa must be a very fit man as he arrived carrying at least very 6 large bags containing a 3.5 metre long marimba – which took about 15 minutes to set up! With 5 Octaves, it is very much a percussion based piano with a beautiful sound. Watching him play is mesmerising...
Born in Japan and now living in Wellington, Naoto picked up the marimba as his instrument of choice and embarked on his undying pursuit of discovering new marimba repertoires.
In 2012, Naoto was supported by Rotary as an ambassadorial scholar and studied music at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore. While studying there, and since, he has been keen to use this African originated instrument to flesh out the nuances of his home country’s culture and style of music.
Naoto teased us by playing two sets of music – one American or European music and the other Japanese music. He asked us if we could guess which was which. He describes Japanese traditional music as having a fragile and confronting style – certainly when you hear the sharp and what we would call ‘slightly off key’ sounds coming at us, you begin to understand how he manages to reflect the nuance of his home country.
He then played us a more traditional Bach piece which was absolutely beautiful – we could have listened to him play for much longer. If you missed his performance at our club meeting, you have the opportunity to hear him play in upcoming concerts over the coming months. Dawn will be able to assist with when those events are on.