The Tokyo Concert Experience

  You could tell Zimerman meant business the moment he walked on stage wearing a tailcoat and a bow tie. I don’t remember when was the last time I saw a soloist wearing that somewhat cliched but cool attire in a concert. I guess it was not out of character for him. He’s known for quirks like touring with his own piano -this being one of the reasons he haven’t performed in the US in over 15 years; according to Wikipedia tight security checks destroyed two of his Steinways. Besides those anecdotal circumstances, he’s definitely in the shortlist of the best living pianists in the planet. He was Karajan’s and Bernstein’s favorite exponent of the instrument. Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto was dedicated to him. He entered the world stage in 1975 by winning the Chopin competition! Unlike in America, Zimerman comes quite often to Japan. This year he played ten dates in this country. One of them, luckily for me, near where I live. I’ve been meaning to see him for years and I wouldn’t let thi...

  This year’s Fuji Rock Festival was an all Japanese affair. Because of the pandemic there were no international acts on the bill. This didn’t translate in a reduction in ticket prices. Can’t really blame the organization for trying to make ends meet, in addition they were kind enough to stream most of it on YouTube. For the financially strapped it was difficult to justify the trip to Naeba this year. As much as I wanted to witness my fourth consecutive edition I had to pass on checking it out this year. I saw this Alternative Night at WWW X as a way of recreating a mid-afternoon Fuji Rock experience at a fraction of the price in one of my favorite venues. A solid lineup that included one of my top three choices from this year's edition of the aforementioned festival, made the offer even more tempting, so I ventured and got a ticket. Didn’t regret it one bit. This was an eclectic evening of really good music. It started off with Yakenohara , from the side next to the audience, spin...

  Abstraction is a difficult word to explain at my English teaching job. For some reason that word in English is not too familiar even among students with artistic interests. I usually say it’s the opposite to naturalism or realism, the latter being easier to understand as a point of reference. When that explanation is not enough I’ll show them pictures of Pollock’s paintings and will tell them how there’s nothing in nature that resembles them. With music it’s more difficult because in essence all music is abstract, there’s no naturalistic representation being attempted. The paradox is that at this Ryoji Ikeda show I couldn’t stop thinking about external references as I was being bombarded by that captivating imagery he’s responsible of - the man has a visual arts background that include individual exhibits at some true A tier museums from around the world. That’s not to say his music is an afterthought, on the contrary. They complement each other nicely. After Ikeda walked to the...

  A brief take on the August 22 concert. It was the first one of an oddly timed tour of Japan just a couple of weeks after the end of the Olympics in the midst of the higher number of daily corona cases this country has experienced yet. The date was at Suntory Hall and the first thing that caught my attention was the laid-back approach at the entrance. No temperature taken, didn’t see lots of hand sanitizers either. Sorry for the grumpiness but that approach put me in a not so great mood from the get-go. It might have been one of the reasons why I didn’t particularly enjoyed this concert. I was pumped to see the legendary group founded by Boulez in the seventies, whose recordings of pieces by Ligeti and Berio I’ve enjoyed through the years. The program also looked quite interesting. A chamber opera by Toshio Hosokawa (I’m not kidding when I said that at least one of his pieces have been performed in every single contemporary music concert I’ve been to in Tokyo) and a not so often p...

  Years ago, when I was new to Japan, I remember seeing this display at the Shibuya Tower Records that held my attention. The cover of one of the albums being advertised was a faded black and white picture of a man wearing a dark suede sports jacket. His detached expression and the wide-eyed naked mannequin in front of him added to the quirkiness. It was definitely intriguing. Some time after that an even more intriguing one, this time as a full-on new release, depicted on its cover the artist as a skeleton playing a steel guitar. I didn’t explore his music even then. It wasn’t until a friend of mine recommended the artist’s former band, Yura Yura Teikoku that I finally caught up. Their garage psychedelic brand of music was right up my alley.  Little did I know that for his solo output Shintaro Sakamoto went the complete opposite direction. He ditched the fuzz pedal and replaced it with a cleaner sound akin to yacht rock or AOR, (hence the covers!). The music was not less fas...

  The void left by the absence of live shows in the last year has been filled by quite a few music related movies released in the past few months. The biggest one, by far, being David Byrne’s American Utopia. The Spike Lee directed movie didn’t disappoint. The build-up from the relatively austere opener until the full band reveal with Talking Heads’ I Zimbra , was electrifying and a reminder of the power of the live music experience. Another word to describe this feeling is magic, which is the name of the annual event curated by Peter Barakan. Since 2014 Barakan has assembled each year an eclectic program of artists outside the mainstream from around the world. The sadly departed Gurrumul came to the second edition in 2015. Other artists that have been part of the festival over the years are Dayme Arocena, Joe Bataan, Arto Lindsay, Omar Sosa, 3MA, Tamikrest and Flor de Toloache . You can find reviews of the headlining shows outside the festival for the last two on this blog. The s...

  Anything to be said about the concert experience in 2020 will be an understatement and will resonate as obvious. It is also pedantic to complain about not being able to enjoy live music in light of all this pandemic has taken from us. For me it made me reminisce and appreciate even more the chances I had to witness some of my favorite artists in the past and in a couple of the handful chances I had to attend shows this year, live music reminded me of the transformative and transcendental nature of art. Lots of cancellations and plans that didn’t come to fruition. There was no Fuji Rock the year. I had tickets to see Tangerine Dream in June, the rapper JID in the same month, Brujeria and Pig Destroyer in March, a performance by the Butoh group Dairakudakan in March, The Tokyo Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Nott performing Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Helmut Lachenmann’s Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied in July and Big Thief first scheduled for May, later postponed to March 2...