Fifteen years is a long time. From its origins in Somerset, the Anglo-Japanese Society of Wessex has since morphed to its present form after its director and organiser moved from his Somerset home to London in 2004. However, for the society’s 15th year anniversary we have decided to hold a special concert at St George’s in Bristol.

The society was known from its earliest days in the Anglo-Japanese community and always had an 'entertainment' aspect to it. But it has been involved in much more than that over the years, for instance organising cultural and educational presentations.

But it was the move to a London base that enabled a closer relationship with the number of exceptional Japanese musicians visiting or living in the UK. Settling into our main concert venue of St Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street, and taking up the position of their concert organiser, Godfrey King was able to reach out to musicians from many other countries expanding the mutual interests and contacts of the society and those it sought to support.

In the last two years alone a total of over 140 concerts have been organised also involving other venues. A search through our website events archives will typify the high quality of the musicians.

As this is our 15th Anniversary Year we are having a special 'Showcase' of some of the musicians that have played for us in a specially organised concert at St George's International Concert venue, Bristol on Thursday 10 November. Twelve musicians, mostly Japanese, have organised a programme of a variety of classical compositions involving an 'eight hands on two pianos' feature, a string ensemble and solo compositions in a 90 minute programme. We hope to see some of you there.

Every Wednesday we have our weekly concerts at St Dunstan in London, the programmes for which you will find on our website or on the Embassy of Japan JapanUK Events Calendar, which helps support us by detailing concerts that include Japanese musicians.

Artists appearing at the 15th anniversary concert:
Top row: Aiki Mori, Akiko Murakami, Kazue Yanagida, Mansoon Bow, Elizabeth McGrath, Hiroko Yamamoto
Bottom row: Jung Yoon Cho, Kumi Matsuo, Aya Halder, Kaya Kuwabara, Ryoko Harada, Yukiko Shinohara