Nishino & Gjersø // Yûgen

Subtle scenic beauty as music and dance meet in freedom-seeking improvisation

Stage

Underhuset

Organizer

Bærum Kulturhus

Part of serie(s)

The best of two worlds: Maiko Nishino — prima ballerina with Norwegian National Opera & Ballet for 16 years. Marius Gjersø — a renowned trumpeter and composer with many years of experience. Together, they present Yûgen, a performance where dance and music merge into a subtle and refined expression. Improvisation — in both dance and music — is the element that makes Yûgen a truly distinctive and highly exciting addition to the jazz festival program.

Yûgen = subtle beauty

The distinctive soundscape and the rich yet restrained atmospheres carry a meditative quality — slow, searching, and contemplative. Combined with Nishino’s precise and emotionally charged movements, the audience is offered an experience that invites reflection and introspective calm.

“The sheer breathless beauty of Yūgen is indeed hard to put into words.” — Jazzwise

Drawing on the album Yûgen, Marius Gjersø creates slow, spacious soundscapes in which acoustic trumpet is expanded through live-processed electronics. On stage, this unfolds in close interplay with Maiko Nishino’s precise and deeply present movement language, where sound, body, and space mirror and amplify one another.

At first, the two inhabit quite different artistic landscapes. It is by no means a given that dance and music will merge into a cohesive expression. Yet through improvisation and an openness to each other’s artistic language, they gradually move closer together. The result is an aesthetic delight — a tribute to the art of subtle improvisation.

The project is inspired by Japanese aesthetics and the concept of yûgen — a subtle, profound beauty that is suggested rather than explained. The music moves within the tension between silence and noise, fragility and immersion, inviting the audience into a focused space for listening and presence. Nishino’s experience from some of the most demanding roles in the classical repertoire brings a physical precision and intensity that elevates the performance further. Together, they create a complete stage work in which music, movement, and light merge into a sensory and immersive experience.

About Maiko Nishino

Maiko Nishino was born in Osaka, Japan, and trained at The Royal Ballet School after studying with Sachiyo Hashimoto and Hans Meister. She joined the Norwegian National Ballet in 1999 and quickly became one of the company’s leading dancers in both classical and contemporary repertoire. She was appointed Principal Dancer in 2005 and received the Critics’ Award the same year for her performance as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake. In 2009, she received the Tom Wilhelmsen Opera and Ballet Prize. In 2022, she opened Studio Maiko and now works as a freelance dancer in Norway and Japan.

About Marius Gjersø

Marius Gjersø is a trumpeter, composer, conductor, and artist based in Oslo. After graduating from the Norwegian Academy of Music, he has worked as a musician for more than a decade across a wide range of genres and artistic expressions. Gjersø creates distinctive soundscapes where acoustic trumpet merges with electronics and visual elements in a cohesive live performance concept.