Toru Sonoda: Roots in Juku, the Path of a Musical Instrument Maker

2017/06/01

I have reached my 10th year since opening a bagpipe making workshop in Germany. After graduating from the Faculty of Business and Commerce, I worked for a pharmaceutical company. When the company merged during my posting in Germany, I took the opportunity to remain here and began my journey toward becoming a bagpipe maker. Thanks to everyone's support, I now have customers in over 20 countries.

Although not widely known, there are over 200 types of bagpipes across Europe and Western Asia, with a history said to span 2,000 years. Their tones and appearances vary greatly, from extremely delicate to wild. I produce over a dozen types of bagpipes, focusing primarily on folk and early music instruments from my local Germany and neighboring Czechia.

Instrument making may seem like a field unrelated to my previous academic and professional background, but in fact, my experiences at the Juku are in the background and have been very useful. In the musicology classes I took at Hiyoshi under the guidance of Professor Takao Tokunaga, we read literature from the Middle Ages to the Baroque period in a seminar format; this has been a great help when restoring early instruments by reading historical materials. Unfortunately, the professor passed away a few years ago, but I was fortunate enough to meet him at the hospital about two weeks before his passing and have him listen to the sound of a bagpipe I had made. Furthermore, the Keio Baroque Ensemble, which I belonged to during my student days, had many seniors, peers, and juniors with high performance skills and deep musical knowledge; what I learned from them and the influence I received is immeasurable. Sneaking into aesthetics lectures at Mita with my club friends is also a fond memory. I also started playing Scottish bagpipes while a student. At that time, I did not meet anyone else playing the bagpipes within Keio, but a bagpipe club was just being formed at Waseda University. Through the friendship between Keio and Waseda, I was invited to practice in Takadanobaba and even performed at the Waseda Festival. This, too, can be called a connection fostered by the Juku. All of these things are connected to my current work.

While the tradition of bagpipes once died out in many regions, a revival has begun in various countries in recent years. The appeal of a single instrument playing multiple notes to create a mysterious harmony is being rediscovered, and today it is an instrument active in various settings, from folk music to chamber music and rock. Because the history since the revival is still short, bagpipe making has a high degree of freedom and is a world still full of frontiers. I hope to continue my devotion and challenges in search of encounters with new sounds.