Thursday, November 7, 2019

TORU TAKEMITSU – [武満徹の作業] Works Of Toru Takemitsu - 4 (LP-1966)




Label: Victor ‎– VX-23
Series: Contemporary Music Of Japan – 4
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: 1966
Style: Contemporary, Classical, Free Improvisation
Manufactured By – Victor Musical Industries, Inc.
Stereo-Orthophonic High Fidelity.  His Master's Voice.
Design – Kohei Sugiura
Photography By – Kiyoshi Otsuji
Engineer [Recording] – Takashi Watanabe
Producer – Jun Taki
Liner Notes – Kuniharu Akiyama
Translated By – George Saitô
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout, stamped): VX-23 – A / VLY 1063 122+ I OA GF
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout, stamped): VX-23 – B / VL Y 1064 152+

side 1:
A1 - Piano Distance ................................................................................................... 4:38
A2 - Pause Uninterrupted .......................................................................................... 7:50
        piano – Yuji Takahashi
A3 - Le Son Calligraphie No.1 for 8 strings ................................................................ 3:23
A4 - Le Son Calligraphie No.3 for 8 strings ................................................................ 2:37
        conductor – Hiroshi Wakasugi
        cello – Akiyoshi Kudo, Tadao Takahashi
        viola – Aya Tanaka, Junko Edo
        violin – Kenji Kobayashi, Mari Hirao, Miyuki Togawa, Namiko Umezu

side 2:
B - Eclipse For Shakuhachi And Biwa ...................................................................... 16:00
      biwa – Kinshi Tsuruta
      shakuhachi – Katsuya Yokoyama

ComposerToru Takemitsu

Takemitsu's compositional journey is fascinating because his relationship with western music and his native musical traditions shows just how limiting are the categories of east and west when it comes to thinking about music's development in the 20th century.


Takemitsu's enthusiasm saw him investigate electro-acoustic music in his early 20s (this was roughly the same time that Pierre Schaeffer was doing a similar thing in Paris), which led him to compose music in an explicitly modernist idiom. He was crazy about the Viennese School composers at the time. An encounter with Stravinsky, who had heard his 1957 Requiem for Strings and taken the young composer out to lunch because he admired the piece so much, was one catalyst for his musical life.
Another of Takemitsu's influences was the music of John Cage in the early 60s. Takemitsu began to explore aspects of indeterminacy in his work (the improvised sections of From Me Flows What You Call Time, for example, are down to this approach – even if Takemitsu's controlled aleatoricism has more in common with Witold Lutosławski than Cage). But it was also thanks to Cage's Zen-inspired ideas about music and the world, Takemitsu explained, that "I came to recognise the value of my own tradition".
The other seismic moment for Takemitsu was seeing a performance of Bunraku puppet theatre and, a couple of decades after the war, opening his heart at last to the beauty of his homeland's musical traditions. "I got a shock … I suddenly recognised I was Japanese."
From the 60s on, Takemitsu's musical project would be to combine elements of Japanese music with the western modernism he loved so much. The blend is apparent in pieces such as November Steps, composed for biwa (the Japanese lute he studied intensively), shakuhachi and orchestra. The effect is more profound than a fuzzy fusion of styles; Takemitsu uses the timbre and texture of the two Japanese instruments to make the whole orchestra breathe and glow with gossamer lightness, something he continues in a later work for the same instruments called Autumn.




But the real substance of Takemitsu's Japanese heritage can't be reduced to an instrument, a colour or even a harmony. There's something more fundamental about his understanding of music; something that informs his work whether he's writing for solo piano, a film score for Akira Kurosawa (he wrote music for more than 100 movies), a string quartet or a concerto. It's something expressed by the Japanese word "ma", which suggests the concept of a void that isn't empty, an absence that is really a presence, a space between things that is full of energy. It's a principle that underpins Japanese gardens, with which Takemitsu often compared his music. "My music is like a garden, and I am the gardener. Listening to my music can be compared with walking through a garden and experiencing the changes in light, pattern and texture." And yet it's also a way of thinking that is by no means exclusive to Takemitsu in contemporary music; it suggests the same circular, non-hierarchical sense of structure and time that composers from Anton Webern to Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti to Steve Reich have explored.
The idea of a meaningful void is worth keeping in mind when you're listening to music Takemitsu wrote in the last two decades of his life. His pieces are rarely long (From Me Flows What You Call Time is among the longest, at around half an hour), they are seldom fast and rarely overtly demonstrative – but they do weird things with time. Listen to his piano concerto, Riverrun (the title comes from Finnegan's Wake), or Quatrain (scored for clarinet, cello, violin, piano and orchestra) or his violin concerto Far Calls. Coming, Far! (another Joyce-inspired title), to experience what I mean. There's a lot to get to grips with in his output: as well as the catalogue of concert pieces, there are those film scores (start with Kurosawa's Ran), as well as music for radio, theatre and television.


Very subtle and specific music by the great Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu.



If you find it, buy this album!

TOKK-ENSEMBLE TOKYO – Music For Living Process... (V–SJX-7539 / LP-1976)




Label: Victor – SJX-7539
Format: Vinyl , LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: 1976
Style: Contemporary, Free Improvisation
Recorded at Victor Studio, October 27, 28 & 29, 1975, Tokyo, Japan.
Design – Kazuhiko Muranaka
Engineer [Recording] – Takashi Watanabe
Recording Supervisor [Recording Director] – Toru Yamazaki
Liner Notes – Yoshiro Irino
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout, stamped): SJX 7539-A - 111+ E 1
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout, stamped): SJX 7539-B - 111+

side 1:
A1 - Toshi IchiyanagiMusic For Living Process ................................................... 13:30
         Harp – Ayako Shinozaki
         Percussion – Yasunori Yamaguchi
         Piano, Composed By – Toshi Ichiyanagi
         Shakuhachi – Katsuya Yokoyama
         Violin [Electric] – Takehisa Kosugi
A2 - Yoshiro IrinoStrömung ................................................................................. 11:10
         Composed By – Yoshiro Irino
         Flute – Hiroshi Koizumi
         Harp – Ayako Shinozaki
         Percussion – Yasunori Yamaguchi

side 2:
B1 - Maki Ishii  Nucleus .......................................................................................... 12:53
         Biwa – Kinshi Tsuruta
         Composed By – Maki Ishii
         Flute – Hiroshi Koizumi
         Harp – Ayako Shinozaki
         Shakuhachi – Katsuya Yokoyama
B2 - Toru TakemitsuMunari By Munari – Corona For Pianist .............................. 12:95
         Composed By – Toru Takemitsu
         Percussion – Yasunori Yamaguchi
         Piano, Celesta,
         Harpsichord [Cembalo] – Toshi Ichiyanagi

Track B2: The two compositions "Munari by Munari" and "Corona For Pianist" are performed simultaneously.On the release this is indicated by printing the titles one below the other, connected by squared brackets.


Massive and mythic album featuring: Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yoshiro Irino, Maki Ishii, Toru Takemitsu, among some more big names Takehisa Kosugi,  Yasunori Yamaguchi, Ayako Shinozaki, Katsuya Yokoyama, Hiroshi Koizumi, better known as TOKK-Ensemble Tokyo.
Not only there are famous names but compositions are great classics and these versions are quite unknown.



Four Japanese avant-garde composers' work is presented, a side each, on this edition Victor– SJX-7539 LP. Beautifully produced, this label specializes in high standard productions, with a striking design that is as modern and oblique as the music they present. On album "Music for Living Process..." all four composers present pieces that reflect a prominent influence of John Cage, which can be accredited to the fact that Ichiagi was a premier interpreter of Cage's music. The experimental work for violin and biwa incorporates elements of chance and improvisation; traditional Japanese modes working in conjunction with distinctly European techniques make for an elating display of premium music...

We move on (very carefully) with important Japanese rarities.
Listen to this incredible album.



If you find it, buy this album!

UEMATSU, TAKAO QUARTET/QUINTET – Debut (Three Blind Mice ‎– 3 / LP-1970)




Label: Three Blind Mice ‎– TBM-3
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Japan / Released: 1970
Style: Post Bop, Contemporary Jazz
Recorded 19 Nov. 1970 at Nippon Hoso (1st Studio), Tokyo, Japan.
Art Direction – Ben Nishizawa
Engineer [Recording Engineer] – Yoshihiko Kannari
Producer – Takeshi Fujii
Matrix / Runout: (Side 1 Runout Stamped): a 949 T
Matrix / Runout: (Side 2 Runout Stamped): a 950

side 1:
A1 - Inside Parts  (T. Uematsu) ................................................................................ 11:09
A2 - Stella By Starlight  (V. Young) ............................................................................ 9:31

side 2:
B1 - T.I.  (Y. Suzuki) ................................................................................................... 8:46
B2 - Sleep, My Love  (Y. Suzuki) ............................................................................... 7:48

Personnel:
Takao Uematsu – tenor saxophone
Sadayasu Fujii – electric piano [fender piano]
Yoshio Suzuki – bass
George Otsuka – drums, percussion
Takashi Imai – trombone (B1, B2)

This is where it all started... The legendary independent jazz label Three Blind Mice was established in 1970, with a clear mission of introducing true talents without consideration for commercialism...


A great debut from Japanese tenorist Takao Uematsu – a player who blows here with a wonderful sense of tone right from the start – almost an inherent sense of spiritualism that he still manages bring to tunes with a straight ahead swing! The approach is a bit like Archie Shepp in that cool stretch when he was stepping away from the outside – and Uematsu's clearly a player who knows the far reaches, but often just hints at them in his music – while moving through these long-blown lines spurred on by a really wonderful group! The combo features excellent Fender Rhodes from Sadayasu Fujii – who stretches out on the long tracks on the set – plus trombone from Takashi Imai, bass from Yoshio Suzuki, and drums from George Otsuka. Titles include "TI", "Sleep My Love", "Stella By Starlight", and "Inside Parts".    (Dusty Groove, Inc.)





It has stood the test of time, and even today, sounds fresh, exciting and just plain brilliant.



If you find it, buy this album!