Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast performing
Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast. Photo: Jane Kim. ©INFGM / ARS

Noguchi at Night

On Tuesday, May 3, 2022, from 7 to 10 pm, The Isamu Noguchi Foundation hosted Noguchi at Night, a special one-night music and culinary experience celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander creatives. Co-chaired by Danny Bowien, Sandy Liang, and Christine Park, the collaborative evening featured a rare solo acoustic set by Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast and a drum solo by Hisham Akira Bharoocha, with Danny Bowien, chef and owner of Mission Chinese, creating dishes to complement the performances. Suntory served up cocktails, Amy Yip of Yip Studio crafted rock cake pops, and Aēsop provided gifts.

Noguchi at Night raises essential funds to support The Noguchi Museum and its 2022 Artist Banner project. The project was launched in 2021 to stand in solidarity against anti-Asian violence and to amplify local AAPI artists’ voices through an open call for artworks displayed across the Museum’s outdoor banners. Noguchi at Night supports the second year of the project with a new artist’s banners to be installed in fall 2022.

We are so grateful to the performers and to co-chairs Danny Bowien, Sandy Liang, and Christine Park, and the host committee for their leadership and help in making Noguchi at Night a great success. Thank you all for your support—we look forward to seeing you again soon!

Japanese Breakfast

Michelle Zauner
Michelle Zauner. Photo: Peter Ash Lee

From the moment she began writing her new album, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner knew that she wanted to call it Jubilee. After all, a jubilee is a celebration of the passage of time—a festival to usher in the hope of a new era in brilliant technicolor. Zauner’s first two albums garnered acclaim for the way they grappled with anguish: Psychopomp was written as her mother underwent cancer treatment, while Soft Sounds From Another Planet took the grief she held from her mother’s death and used it as a conduit to explore the cosmos. Now, at the start of a new decade, Japanese Breakfast is ready to fight for happiness, an all-too-scarce resource in our seemingly crumbling world. Jubilee finds Michelle Zauner embracing ambition and, with it, her boldest ideas and songs yet. Inspired by records like Bjork’s Homogenic, Zauner delivers bigness throughout—big ideas, big textures, colors, sounds, and feelings. At a time when virtually everything feels extreme, Jubilee sets its sights on maximal joy, imagination, and exhilaration. It is, in Michelle Zauner’s words, “a record about fighting to feel. I wanted to re-experience the pure, unadulterated joy of creation…The songs are about recalling the optimism of youth and applying it to adulthood. They’re about making difficult choices, fighting ignominious impulses and honoring commitments, confronting the constant struggle we have with ourselves to be better people.”


Hisham Akira Bharoocha

Hisham Akira Bharoocha
Hisham Akira Bharoocha. Photo: Deirdre O’Callaghan

Born in Japan, Hisham Akira Bharoocha is a mixed-race (Japanese-Indian-Myanmar), multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to being a founding member of the experimental rock group Black Dice (1997-2004), Bharoocha has played in many bands who have toured the world, including Boredoms, Pixeltan (DFA Records), Soft Circle, IIII, and Nick Zinner’s 41 Strings. He was the lead music director in pieces that were performed at prestigious venues such as the Sydney Opera House (Australia), ICP (London), Royal Festival Hall (London), Rockefeller Plaza (NY), The Museum of Modern Art (NY), and The Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), to name a few. Bharoocha is known for the large-scale drum-centric performances he directed with the Japanese experimental rock group Boredoms, called the BOADRUM series, with up to 100 drummers performing with the band at site-specific locations around the world (2007–15). Bharoocha also performed as a touring member of Boredoms at the Barbican (London), the Ruhrtriennale (Germany), and several All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals (in London, Minehead, and Tokyo). Bharoocha has collaborated on many site-specific music performances with esteemed artists such as Doug Aitken, Ikue Mori, Otomo Yoshihide, Yoshimio, and Yamantaka Eye, to name a few. His latest band, Kill Alters, has a new album out now on Hausu Mountain. Bharoocha’s latest club-oriented, solo project called YOKUBARI has upcoming releases on the UK-based label Chinabot.


Danny Bowien

Danny Bowien
Danny Bowien. Photo: Leia Jospé

Danny Bowien is the chef and cofounder of Mission Chinese in San Francisco and New York. In 2008 he improbably won the Pesto World Championship in Genoa, Italy, and in 2013 the James Beard Foundation named him Rising Star Chef of the Year. He was born in Korea, raised in Oklahoma, and now lives in New York. He was the main subject of the sixth season of the travel and food show The Mind of a Chef.

 

Co-Chairs
Danny Bowien
Sandy Liang
Christine Park
Host Committee
Minami Gessel
Miki Higasa
Bliss Lau
Patrick Li
Berrin Noorata
Tomoko Ogura
Julia Shao
Judi Wong
Sponsors
Maximilian Coreth and Marine Hartogs
Jennifer and Malcolm Nolen
Open Society Foundations
White Cube

Colony
Danielle Frankel

Sooyeon Chung and Jean Im
Andrew Fisher
Alex Huang and Nick Illobre
Roger Kim and Jessica Yu
Mark Lewin and Grace Wong
Carol Lo and John Culkin
Kari Parks and Jake St. John
The House of Suntory
Ed Tang
Marcella Zimmermann
Supporters
Adam Argetsinger
Nick Atkins
Aiko Austin and Tomoko Ogura
Mina Azimov and Gia Nguyen
Karen and Drew Bacon
Spencer Bailey and Emma Bowen
Elizabeth Beer and Brian Janusiak
Jessica Begonia and Cody Gomes
Nitin Bhambhani
Martin Bland
Bloomberg Philanthropies
Mark Blumenfeld
Clarke Boehling and Hannah Sultan
Dorian Booth
Kattia and Owen Bossola
Lillian Boyle
Alison Bradley
Maureen Cahill and Zesty Meyers
James Carson
Frances Cha and Soon Ho Lee
Hee Kyung Lucia Cho
Brandon Choi
Carolyn Chou
Kristen Chuang
Brittany Cota and Jordan Fuller
Diego Cristancho and Mariana Vidal
Monica and Nellie Debbeler
Ariane Doliery and Julian Cheung
Yanni Du
Susan Dunne
Nhu Q. Duong
Valentina Espana
Fabiana Faria and Helena Barquet
Scott Ferguson and Kelly Gallagher
Christiane Fischer-Harling
Aaron Foster
Minami Gessel
Jennifer Gibbons
Karelle and Christopher Golda
Gabriella Gomez and Joseph Rosales
Beth Griffenhagen
Sarah Gunter
Jesuel Padró Guzmán
Kikka Hanazawa
Miki Higasa and Christopher Hill
Emily Hill and Ariel Weingarten
Hagan Hinshaw and Jess Thomas Hinshaw
Tina Hong-Sandmel and Chris Sandmel
Shion Ishikura
Paola and Michael Kagan
Alex Kean
Annie Kim and Jeffrey Lin
Brianne Kim
Nicole and Philip Kim
Franchesca König Toro
Charles Kuang
Lucy Lamphere
Bliss Lau
Sarah Lee
Cynthia Leung
Caitlin Lewis and Matthew Wing
Patrick Li and Alix Browne
Jack Lin
Robert Little
Jessie Liu
Jennifer and Steven Lorch
Tamar Lusztig
Mia Maestro
Marc Mailhot
Sage Mehta and Michael Robinson
Claudia Mei and Arata Niizuma
Jennifer Mink and Ava Holmes
Timothy Moore and Avery Murphy
Nicholas Mundell
Satoru and Hiroko Murase
Miyako Nakamura
Beverly Nguyen
Berrin Noorata
Anna Olujimi
Raj Pamar
Christine Park
Monique Péan and Stephen Glass
Darrell Petit
Phillips Auctioneers
Mary Ping
Jennifer Pio
Steve Pulimood
Rekha and Anuj Puri
Dan Pye and Jordan Shapiro
Julie Ragolia
Justine Rappaport and Sean Struss
Rae Ravich
Miyo and Mitchell Reff
Julia Reilly
Saadia and Seth Ricart
Melanie Ruiz and Jeffrey Kim
Lindsay Saito and Mike Andersen
Syed Salahuddin and Mindy Tchieu
Christina Saratsis
Phyllis and Leonard Seevers
Yulu Serao
Julia Shao
Anna Shen
Christine and Thomas Shin
Eric C. Shiner
Johanne Siff
Jared Simon
Nicole Sison and David Feusse
Emily Stoller-Patterson and Sam Wampler
Stella Stringer
Jessica Superman
Sundaram Tagore
Sina Taherkhani
Akiko Takahashi
Junette Teng and Leonard Salgado
Sugar Vendil
Madeline and Max Warshaw
Hailey Wattman and Gautum Suresh
Samantha Weiss Hills
Joanne Wong
Judi Wong
Kevin Xu