When I walked into the temple grounds of Yakushiji in Nara, I heard crickets chirp in the dense thicket of autumn grasses around two pagodas silhouetted against the twilight sky. A large, excited crowd was gathering , and yet a solemn serenity enveloped the whole temple. I had some time to kill until the gate to the venue of the Japan Airlines Otobutai Sound Stage opened, so I strolled around basking in the serenity of the site.

The concert series held annually since 1989, is a unique cross-cultural phenomenon presenting topnotch artists from around the world who perform jointly at ancient temples in Kyoto and Nara. A TV special on the series by Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) was an International Emmy Awards Finalist in 1998. Needless to say, tickets are in great demand; only people lucky enough to be selected in a random drawing or officially invited can see a particular event.

With a history of 13 centuries and being designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998, Yakushiji is one of the most suitable temples to serve as a dramatic setting for the Otobutai. Especially beautiful are its twin East Pagoda (Toto) and West Pagoda (Saito), which Ernest Fenollosa, the famous American curator of Oriental arts once called "frozen music." They are an inspiring and photogenic subject for anyone carrying a camera.

The Otobutai started with the appearance of the temple's high priests on the stone edge of the terrace of the Main Hall (Kondo). They began their solemn recital of the sutras and somberly paraded on the elevated corridor stage bridged to the Great Lecture Hall (Dai-kodo). The Gagaku (ancient court music and dance) Team of Tenri University then came out for a performance of a time-honored ceremony. The performance drew the audience   to a remote and legendary time in the 6th century when the Chinese monk Hsuan Tsang traveled all the way to India to study the Buddha's teachings.

I hadn't read the Otobutai pamphlet because I wanted to experience the performance with my  senses fresh, so when the wimpled leading character Hsuan Tsang danced onto the stage, I was fooled into thinking he was being played by an actress. A few people sitting next to me whispered that it was Kantaro Nakamura, the famous young Kabuki actor who was so elegantly  portraying the famous monk performing his lofty task and confronting numerous crises and trials. All the supporting players  the monk's disciples and foes were masked, as the art of Gigaku is a masked dance drama, originally brought to Japan more than a thousand years ago.

According to legend, Hsuan Tsang on his way to India heard music that was so beautiful that he experienced salvation and spiritual awakening. Between the acts of Gigaku, there were three peaceful music performances.

The first one, performed by Marta Sebestyen and Muzsikas from Hungary was exotic yet oddly nostalgic. Her song "Love Love" had a strangely sentimental effect, because its melody and rhythm were similar to a certain Japanese old folk song with  its slightly earthy feeling. Another of the instruments, a recorder, resembled a shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute. The audience applauded loudly when she sang and danced waving a red scarf reminding us of our own folk dances.

At the second interval amid a perfect silence, John Ken Nuzzo, a rising young tenor sang "Amor ti vieta" from the opera "Fedora" by Umberto Giordano. He was born in Japan to an American father and a Japanese mother and studied singing in California. Already famous as an international soloist, he recently sang the theme song for a popular Japanese TV saga drama which made him a pop idol. While he was singing "E lucevan le stele" from Puccini's opera Tosca, the female members of the audience seemed to forget to breathe and gave a deep sigh of admiration when he finished.

The third act of Gigaku presented the final part of Hsuan Tsang's difficult journey to the Western paradise. As if to imply the celebration of the great monk's accomplishment, Joshi Juni Gakubo (The Twelve-Girl Band) from China stepped out of the Great Hall and played their classical Chinese instruments with modern arrangements of traditional Chinese music. The ensemble, composed of graduates from elite music academies, has been mesmerizing a great number of Japanese fans since their debut album in Japan, stayed at the top of the charts for 30 weeks. They performed dazzling performances of "Miracle," "Jasmin" and "Forbidden City." Flower petals of thin paper blown high up into the sky started falling over the excited audience during the grand finale, which was amazed by all the Gigaku players and the other artists, including the Twelve Girls played Kiko ("shining and twinkling"). I picked up a peach-colored petal and found a single Chinese character written on its surface. It was "ku" (void) quoted from "Form is Void, Void is Form," one of the fundamental concepts of Buddhism as scripted in Hannya Shingyo, the most popularly chanted sutra in Japan. It took a moment for me to recall that this "sange," or flower petal dispersing, is an important religious ritual   to thank the Buddha and bless his believers.

Walking out of the concert venue of this great music event called the Otobutai, I felt I'd just been part of a congregation worshipping in the nave of a great temple.