NEWS

Ayumi Hamasaki Appearing at UMF KOREA as Surprise Guest

2013/07/8

Ayumi-Hamasaki

Ayumi Hamasaki appeared at a world class dance music festival UMF KOREA at Jamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul, Korea on June 14, as a special guest.

UMF(ULTRA MUSIC FESTIVAL)is a large outdoor based electronic music festival which takes place in March at Miami since 1999. In the last fifteen years, total of 1 million people came, and about 300 thousand people participated this past March, 2013. It is one of the successful dance festivals in the international scene. This year marked the second time for in Korea. The committee wanted to nominate a celebrity as a presenter, someone who can represent Asia to the world.
ayu was offered the role. ayu counter-offered her acceptance if she could be a presenter for ARMIN VAN BUUREN, the headliner artist on the 14th.

10:15 pm on the day. Right before the start of ARMIN VAN BUUREN’s DJ, MC kicked in introducing ayu “Japanese POP star, ayumi hamasaki~!”. ayu greeted “Hello” in Korean as she came up on stage, over 30,000 fans cheered wildly in excitement. ayu got the fans more excited in English and Korean. Finally, DJ introduced ARMIN VAN BUUREN and brought him to the stage at climax. ARMIN appeared and took over the DJ booth, started playing. The event went on till almost 12 midnight. The fans were packed at the site enjoying the world top class DJ performance for the night.

Ayumi Hamasaki has worked with famous oversea dance music producers for many songs by ‘Remix’ approach since her debut in 1998. Under the artist name “AYU”, she made it to be listed on the UK dance chart and the Germany national chart as the first Japanese artist.

ayu worked on a collaborative piece with the legendary figure and starter of Dutch trance music, FERRY CORSTEN (a.k.a. SYSTEM F) through “Connected” (Produced by Ferry Corsten), one of the original recordings in the album “I am…”. Her affinity and history with oversea artists are not a kind you can see among other J-POP artists.

ayu has actively sought dance music elements in her works. With the recent trend of EDM bubble, ayu will introduce more new sounds linked with world elements to the Japanese music scene before long.

Official Website: http://www.avexnet.or.jp/ayu/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ayu_19980408
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ayu
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/ayu_official


FEATURE