Promoting cooperative community revitalization by strengthening local ties: This is the purpose of the Yawata Community Music Festival held on January 24 in the city of Yawata in Kyoto Prefecture, part of a FY 2009 charity program supported by The Nippon Foundation. An 80-member orchestra and 120-member choir formed of local residents gave stirring renditions of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Yawata Engi (History of Yawata), a piece commissioned by the city. Ticket revenues will be donated to 15 welfare volunteer organizations currently operating in Yawata.

Yawata music festival stage

Support for charity events seeks to promote spontaneous and positive local decision-making at a time when national and regional finances are limited and local regions are having to resolve their issues themselves. In FY 2009, The Nippon Foundation provided support for ten such programs nationwide, including classical concerts for families and a stage play commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of writer Seicho Matsumoto. In its twelfth year, the Yawata Community Music Festival this year was selected as one of the events to receive support.

Music festival poster

By supporting such events, the foundation seeks to increase the cooperation and interaction between local residents and community volunteer organizations. The Yawata Community Orchestra consists mainly of amateurs; the choir was formed last August by 143 individuals who volunteered for this year’s music festival. An inauguration ceremony was held in August last year, and intense rehearsals have been conducted three to four times each month.

The venue for the music festival was the main hall at the Yawata Cultural Center, which seats 1,200. Advance-sale tickets priced at 1,500 yen went on sale from October last year, selling out by the year’s end. Long queues of local residents before the start of the festival on the 24th is evidence of strong local interest in the event.

The Yawata Cultural Center, the festival venue

The program included the Yawata Engi, a piece composed by young composer Ichiro Hirano, who received the Nippon Foundation Special Incentive Award at the Japan Symphony Foundation’s Prize-winning Recital. Described as an “imaginary ethnography of sound that follows the long history of Yawata-no-kami (The Deity of Yawata),” the concert marked the public premiere of the piece. Composer Hirano took the stage following the performance to receive flowers and applause from the full house.

Long queues of people waiting for doors to open

The concert was a community event, with local residents involved in all aspects, from ticket sales to venue preparations and controls. Operating costs were covered by The Nippon Foundation. Ticket revenues were donated to local volunteer groups to invigorate community activities.

The music festival secretariat is headed by Akihiko Tokioka, director of the Yawata Cultural Center, who spoke of his hopes for increased cooperative activities in the future, remarking on the interaction and opportunities for cooperation that the event has generated between cultural organizations and volunteer organizations that had previously operated independently.