Press Quotes
Mermaid Meat and Other Japanese Ghost Stories
PRESS QUOTES
“ an artful weaving of myth, ritual, traditional storytelling technique and the orchestral tradition…an unforgettable and courageous performance.”
- Los Angeles News
“impressive…powerfully erotic…”
Oakland Tribune
“…stories, ancient and new…dominated by women battling the odds with a strength bordering on obsession.” The Washington Post
” Aoki encompasses the comic and the tragic with fine, quick, delicate gestures, using everything from her expressive hands and face to her long sweeping black hair…making relevant and magical even the most faraway tales.”
Los Angeles Times, Critic’s Choice
“The foremost narrative voice working in America today.”
Robert Shay, CEO New Line Cinema
” Aoki held the audience entranced and horrified.”
South China Morning Post
“…poignant…comic..eerie…” St.Louis Post-Dispatch
“….extraordinary capacity for evoking an entire spectrum of experience out of her own body and throat.”
Allen Ullrich, San Francisco Examiner
“ Aoki is a fascinatingly varied and inventive performer.”
Hollywood Drama-Logue
“Aoki’s remarkable talents as a performer and storyteller - talents which include an impressive synthesis of modern and traditional Japanese and American theatrical techniques of dance, mime, movement, song and voice placement…a fascinatingly varied and inventive performer throughout, vocally providing her own music - Japanese chants, hummed Tchaikovsky, snatches of familiar songs - and vocalizing her own sound effects, too. And she uses her glorious mane of dark, wavy, massy hair like no performer ever seen: tying it in an instant into a variety of swift knots, suddenly releasing it to flow and swing this way and that. Truly, Aoki’s hair could have taken its own curtain call.”
-Hollywood Drama-Logue
“I like performers who’s every measured gesture and struck attitude shows their training and polish. But I save my respect for people like Brenda Wong Aoki. An actor and dancer with great technical skill who doesn’t make her virtuosity the point. Instead she focuses tightly on the stories she tells. For Aoki the tale is more important than the teller. And her story - about her attempts to find herself in rootless America, the first-generation daughter of a Chinese mother and Japanese father - is one that any American searching for herself or himself (which is mnost of us, I think) will find fascinating and inspirational.”
-Critics Choice Chicago Weekly Reader
“…Storytelling at it’s best…don’t miss her.” Star Tribune, Minneapolis MN
“…held the audience spellbound.” New York NICHIBEI
“…memorable…beautiful…dangerous…” St. Louis Dispatch
“…The star was San Francisco’s Brenda Wong Aoki…stunning performances.” Seattle Times
Praise for “The Queen’s Garden”
***** 5 Stars! Amazon.com - “I can’t say enough about this CD and how it has inspired me! It is a complete masterpiece! Not since I was a little kid being tucked into bed have I been so enchanted by a captivating story. Brenda Wong Aoki’s voice is as sweet and soothing as it is powerful. Now take this already amazing spoken word masterpiece and accompany it with an equally amazing musical score, composed by Bassist, Mark Izu. To me, it centers in a Jazzy place, but constantly ventures out into an assortment of styles breaking all barriers of genre and classification. I’ve got to give credit to each of the musician s for helping make this piece come to life and affect me so profoundly. The Queen’s Garden has given me new artistic inspiration and Brenda Wong Aoki’s name is now and forever on my list of influences.”
-Kaiyoti, Personal Assistant to Al Jarreau
