Tomoko Sauvage

Tomoko Sauvage

Tomoko Sauvage is a Japanese musician and artist active since the mid-2000s, based between Japan and France. She works across performance, installation and composition, with a practice centred on improvisation, environment and the sculptural qualities of sound.

Practice and instrumentation

Sauvage is mainly known for a musical and visual practice built around a self-invented natural synthesiser. It uses water, bowls, ceramic objects, light and underwater amplification. Her work explores ideas of alchemy, meditation, and the balance between chance and control.

Her approach grows from an interest in jazz, Indian music and improvisation. After studying jazz piano in New York, she moves to Paris in 2003. Listening to Alice Coltrane and Terry Riley leads her towards Indian music, and she studies improvisation in Hindustani music.

Development of the hydrophonic instrument

In 2006, she attends a performance by Aanayampatti Ganesan, a virtuoso of jalatharangam, the Carnatic instrument played with water-filled porcelain bowls. The simplicity and sound of the instrument inspires her to begin striking Chinese bowls with chopsticks in her kitchen. She then develops the idea of immersing herself in water and using an underwater microphone, which leads to the creation of her electro-aquatic instrument.

Performances and collaborations

Sauvage presents her work regularly in Europe, Asia and the Americas through performances, installations and musical works. Her work appears at venues and festivals including Roskilde Festival, Flow Festival, Centre Pompidou Metz, Musée Quai Branly, Présences Electronique, Borderline Festival, Borealis Contemporary Music Festival, Museo Tamayo, High Zero Festival, Festival send+receive, Empty Gallery, TÖNE festival and Grimmuseum.

She is also closely connected to DIY art and music scenes, and her interest increasingly includes educational projects. In 2016, she begins the visual music project Green Music with Francesco Cavaliere.