Andrew Jilin — Russian musician, shakuhachi and shamisen player and teacher, music composer, founder of "Shakuhachi in Russia" association, co-organizer of "Shakuhachi Tai Kai" traditional Japanese music festival in Moscow, founder of Japanese fusion music band "Tori".
Andrew has started his music career early in school and high school playing in amateur rock bands. During his university years, he has joined a couple of blues and rock bands. Later on Andrew played drums in a blues and country cover band Los Aybolitos.
Andrew has been playing and studying traditional Japanese bamboo flute shakuhachi since 2006. In 2007, he has founded a “Shakuhachi in Russia” association, which gathered all shakuhachi players in Russian speaking world. Firstly, this was an internet forum for all shakuhachi lovers, but in two years, it has become a huge Wikipedia like web site collecting all information about shakuhachi and Japanese music history in Russian. During active years of “Shakuhachi in Russia” (2008 — 2016), members of this association translated from Japanese, English and other languages to Russian a huge variety of musical, historical and religious texts. For example, Hisamatsu Fuyo treatises or “Yearning for the Bell” by Riley Lee.
From 2012 to 2015, Andrew has been playing shakuhachi in Wa-On ensemble at Moscow State Conservatory. In 2018 — 2019 has played twice in a flute competition held by Dolzhikov Foundation.
As a recording artist Andrew has released 4 albums with solo pieces on shakuhachi both modern and traditional Honkyoku, one album of spoken lyrics and digital synthesizers, one album of shakuhachi music with a string quartet and three works of ethno-core noise music (released only on tapes), one album of Japanese folk music Minyo with “OnTatami” band on shamisen. Andrew has produced six compilations of shakuhachi concerts played by renowned Russian shakuhachi players held in Moscow. In addition, two producer works where released: an album of comic hip-hop band “Pyrosmoney” and the most popular Korean song Arirang played by Moscow band of Korean music “Arasa”.
Andrew is featured as a composer in two movies and one cartoon. “Ronnin and Death” (2014) – a film by Russian director Eugene Gordyukhin. “The Cure” 2021 – a film by Tina Gu, American institute of cinema. “A boy who paints cats” (2017) – cartoon by Sofia Sablina based on Japanese fairytale.
Japanese musician Koichi Yoshida on shakuhachi and Andrew on bass guitar started playing together in 2014 in Koichi Yoshida Mysterious Fusion Band. Later on percussion and guitar players joined the band. With this line-up, the band has performed about 30 shows in different venues in Moscow and Nizhniy Novgorod. The band had no official professional records although some pieces of music can be found on YouTube and on bootleg music sites. While playing in Mysterious band Andrew has attended «Tom Hess Musical Career Mentoring Program» online. When Koichi Yoshida moved back to Japan, Andrew has started a new band with his friend guitarist Oleg Moscalev. The name of the band is “Tori” which means “a bird” in Japanese. Since 2015 “Tori” has been performing live concerts in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Tula and other cities of Russia. Having added another classical guitar, violin and vocals “Tori” has recorded two albums (available worldwide on Apple Music, Spotify etc.) and will release the third one in 2023.
Andrew has three music teachers. Sebastien Shogetsu (Kyoto, Japan) – shakuhachi teacher of Taizan Ha School from Myoan ji temple. Marco Lienhard (New York, US) – shakuhachi teacher of Dokyoku style by Yokoyama Katsuya. Kouzan Oyama (Tokyo, Japan) – tsugaru shamisen style teacher.
Among social and festival activity Andrew has represented Russian Federation on World shakuhachi festival 2012 in Kyoto. Since 2014, he is a resident member of Russian Festival of Japanese Culture J-FEST (now Sora Fest), took part in Sakhalin festival of Japanese culture in 2016 at the invitation of the Consulate General of Japan in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Also since 2014, he is a co-founder of Russian annual shakuhachi Tai Kai, a festival representing Japanese traditional music and culture to a wide range of audience.
E-mail andrewjilin@yandex.ru