Harmonic Hatchery Productions

Harmonic Hatchery Productions was established in 1982 to offer live and recorded jazz in a variety of formats and to promote intercultural musical exchange between Japan and North America. The company is directed by Ron Hadley, a jazz pianist and composer who has an academic background in Oriental languages and a deep fondness for the performing arts of Japan. Mr. Hadley is active as a performer, producer and translator in Tokyo as well as the Pacific Northwest, and is thus able to offer to North American and Japanese presenters direct and affordable access to superb professional musicians from both cultures. At Harmonic Hatchery Productions the emphasis is on cultivating a personal approach that enables presenters and artists to work together for the common cause of producing distinctive events. This has resulted in a rapidly increasing list of satisfied clients on both sides of the Pacific.

Harmonic Hatchery Productions is constantly developing a variety of concert, entertainment and educational programs based on jazz, traditional Japanese music and combinations of the two. Some of our current features are briefly described in the following list.

Solo Jazz Piano by Ron Hadley --- Mr. Hadley is a veteran solo and ensemble player who studied with Jaki Byard at the New England Conservatory of Music and attended Berklee College of Music. His improvisations and solo renditions of jazz standards and original material continue to contribute to the success of special occasions, events and enterprises in many different settings. ("Hadley is a masterful improvisor with a profound understanding of jazz's history and in-the-moment essence. If you get a chance to hear him play live, don't miss the opportunity."... Joseph Blake, The Times Colonist [Victoria, B.C.] )

The Harmonic Hatchery Band --- This is an ensemble that specializes in jazz for children (although we haven't been able to accurately observe an upper age limit on the word, "children".) Members of the band have released a cassette containing twenty-three well-known children's songs from around the world, as well as a CD of entirely original material. Performances in Japan and North America have included jazz improvisation and rhythm workshops in elementary schools, jazz concerts in children's festivals and amusement parks and auditorium events in which forest-dwelling elves, fossilized men and piano-playing gorillas appear on stage to join in the music. One of the Harmonic Hatchery Band's intercultural programs that has received an enthusiastic response is a project that utilizes multi-track recording techniques to facilitate song-writing collaboration between elementary school children in Japan and North America.

The Sagami Traditional Music Duo-- This duo is made up of members of the prestigious, Tokyo-based Japanese music organization, Pro Musica Nipponica. The instruments played are koto and shakuhachi. Although its repertoire does consist of a variety of traditional solo and duo pieces, the duo also performs works by contemporary composers such as Minoru Miki. Both members of the duo have been officially recognized by the Japanese government as Hogaku (traditional Japanese music) educators, and their participation in Harmonic Hatchery Productions' "Hogaku in the Schools" program has brought rewarding and memorable experiences to students and teachers throughout North America.

The Eloquent Fish Ensemble -- This unique ensemble came into being in Tokyo in the spring of 1990 when shakuhachi virtuoso Toshiya Mizukawa and jazz pianist Ron Hadley organized the group to perform Mr. Hadley's compositions and to continue intercultural projects on which they had been collaborating since the summer of 1989. The ensemble is an amalgamation of the Sagami Traditional Music Duo(koto and shakuhachi) and the Ron Hadley Quintet (piano, bass, drums saxophones and voice). In addition to presenting original compositions and arrangements of traditional pieces, ensemble members perform authentic Hogaku as well as material drawn from the standard jazz repertoire. Workshops and lecture/demonstrations dealing with the two fields of Japanese music and jazz (as well as how these fields might be combined) are an important part of the group's schedule.