Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

As promised, World Shakuhachi Festival 2008 Director Dr. Riley Lee has released the rules for the "S-1 World Grand Prix; The Young Player’s Competition for Shakuhachi at WSF08". Drum roll please.......


"S-1 World Grand Prix; The Young Player’s Competition for Shakuhachi at WSF08

Entry Deadline: 29 February 2008

Application Requirements: aged 39 years or less on 30 June 2008. You are ineligible if your 40th birthday was/is before or on 30 June 2008.

Application Process: Record your own performance, convert the recording to an mp3 file and email the file to the Competition Supervisor at wsf08s1@gmail.com.

The subject of the email should be “S-1 World Grand Prix preliminary”.

In the body of the email, include your name, address (including country) and the name of the piece. Please use either English or Japanese.

The Competition Supervisor will immediately send a confirmation email after receiving your entry. If you do not receive a reply within 48 hours, please check to see if your email and mp3 attachment went through successfully.

Contest Entry Fee: none

Final Selection: Entrants who are chosen in the preliminary round will compete in the final round during WSF2008, by performing in the Finalists Concert in Sydney.

Choice of Piece: You can perform any shakuhachi solo, regardless of genre. One’s own compositions however, are not acceptable. (The piece submitted in the initial application must be the same piece performed during the Finalists Concert.)

Time Limit: 4 minutes or less for the preliminary round (an abridged version of the piece is acceptable). 6 minutes or less for the final round

Judges: Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, Teruo Furuya, Yoshio Kurahashi, Riley Lee, Hozan Nomura, Veronique Piron, Ralph Samuelson, Ronnie Seldin, David Wheeler. Judges for the preliminary round and the final round may differ.

Notification of Results of Preliminary Round: 15 March 2008 on WSF08 website

Prize Money: The following number of finalists will be chosen from these countries:
Japan – 5; The Americas – 3; Australia – 2 ;Rest of the World (Europe, Asia, Africa, etc) – 2.  Total finalists: 12

Finalists of the preliminary round will receive free registration for WSF08 ($500).

The ten finalists outside of Australia will receive an additional $500 in cash assistance towards their Sydney airfare.

The top three contestants will be chosen at the Finalist Concert and awarded the following prize money: 1st  $1200, 2nd $1000, 3rd $800. All prize money is in Australian dollars.

Jury System: Anyone can apply to be ‘public’ judge for the preliminary round. By paying a participation fee of AUS$20, one will receive the original recordings from all of the preliminary round contestants, after the closing date, and can vote for one or more of the contestants, to a value of 2 points. The total points voted in this manner will make up a maximum of 20% of the final decision for the preliminary round.

Deadline for applying to be a ‘public’ judge is 29 February 2008.

If you are interested in becoming a ‘public’ judge, keep checking the registration page on WSF08 website. Eventually (before February 2008!) you will be able to apply and pay on-line to become a ‘public’ judge.

You do not have to attend WSF08 to become a ‘public’ judge.

The ‘public’ jury system will not apply in the final round of the Competition."

This is a great opportunity and I recommend everybody who is eligible and who has any aspiration to be a shakuhachi performer to work up a piece and enter. Please do not speculate about what the judges are looking for or about your personal musical shortcomings. Just go for it! You have nothing to lose, the worse thing that happens is you practice a lot and learn a piece. Even if you don't win it might lead to other things. So be positive. Let's show the Festival what kind of enthusiasm there is for shakuhachi. It's an excellent panel of judges with no particular bias.