The Tokyo Concert Experience

Only one founding member remains, cellist András Fejér. First violinist Edward Dusinberre joined in 1993 and violist Geraldine Walther in 2005. The most recent addition is second violinist Harumi Rhodes who joined last year. And yet the name Takács Quartet carries a lot of weight, it’s considered one of the leading chamber music ensembles in the world. Recordings like that of the Bartók cycle, from 1993, are a point of reference among fans. This concert took place at the Yamaha Hall, a posh concert hall with excellent acoustics nested on the eight floor of the Yamaha building in Ginza. It started right on time with Haydn’s Quartet OP. 33 No. 3, “The Bird” . These one, along with the other five quartets in Opus 33, was dedicated to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia, who will eventually will be crowned as emperor and will reign the country for five years at the end of the 18th Century. As the nickname hints it, there’s a feathery lightness to this piece that was eloquently conveyed b...

Every once in a while Magma will play a short residence at Le Triton, a small club in the outskirts of Paris. They even recorded a couple of live albums there. The place is more of a hole in the wall with a tiny stage, quite a contrast with the venue they performed at in Tokyo. I got the chance to see them at Le Triton in 2010 and witnessed the insane amounts of energy pouring from that stage. It was in the summer and felt like a sauna in there, to the point that, on cue, a woman fainted while the last notes of the last song were played. After seeing them live I could understand why they’re filed in the jazz section at the Fnac stores in France. The improvisational aspects of the band come across clearly in the live setting. It’s hard to describe, but there’s definitely a jazz feel to their music. At tonight’s show Cristian Vander will grab the mic for some singing and scatting from behind his kit during slow passages. He’ll held it as if he was pressing the keys of a saxophone....

In the mid-eighties, at the height of the teen film craze, Leonard Bernstein decided to record the definite version of West Side Story , one that will put the operatic aspects upfront. He assembled an all-star cast with the leads being played by Kiri Te Kanawa, Jose Carreras and Tatiana Troyanos. The resulting recording was a superb one, but even better was the behind the scenes documentary about the recording process. I watched it countless times back in the day, each time in awe by Bernstein’s and the performers’ energy. Watching this I understood what an undertaking a studio recording is. West Side Story became my favorite musical and I knew it better from that documentary than from the movie. I didn’t have the opportunity to see the musical on stage until now, even though doing this have been on my bucket list since forever. As it turns out my mother-in-law is also a fan and invited us to go see the stage production at the IHI Stage Around Tokyo. This theater is quite uniq...

The last time I went to Good Heavens was more than three years ago to see Hannibal Buress with Eric Andre as an opening act. As you can imagine it was an awesome show. Hannibal ended up riffing beyond his allotted hour for an extra twenty minutes of his brand of surreal observational comedy. Over the years I missed tons of shows at that venue, for the most part I will find out about them after the fact. So this time, when I saw that Neal Brennan was coming, I thought that finally I would be able to catch a stand up show there. The thing is that I almost didn’t. The show was scheduled on the same date as the  previously reviewed  Black Midi one. Luckily for me a second show was added and I was able to barely make it after running like a madman at the end of my shift at work. The people from Good Heavens were extremely nice answering my messages on Facebook with questions about the schedule and the atmosphere at the place was really welcoming, I look forward to checking an...

I recently finished watching the documentary series Rolling Stone: Stories From The Edge and was reminded of the famous quote from Jon Landau about his reaction when he first saw Bruce Springsteen in concert. “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen”. What’s funny is that even at that time -early seventies- The Boss sound was rooted in tradition to the point that it was a throwback to the sixties and fifties. That’s not saying he wasn’t innovative, but if Landau would have said the same thing after seeing Kraftwerk or Kool Herc it would have been maybe more accurate. In a similar vein Black Midi has been hyped as the “saviors of guitar based rock”. Their reinterpretation of the post-punk sound has been critically acclaimed, their debut album has received nothing but rave reviews across the board. I was curious to see them and got a ticket about a month prior to their Japan debut show, just before it sold out. On my way to the venue I saw the band posing fo...

Years ago, back in 2003, I worked as an assistant for a filmmaker dear friend of mine whose partner was Leslie Van Houten’s attorney. Van Houten is in prison for her participation in the LaBiancas murder committed the day after Sharon Tate and a group her friends were killed by members of the Manson family. She was convicted to life in prison with eligibility for parole after death sentences were automatically commuted to life in prison in California in 1972. Her role in the murders has been vastly documented and considered as not an active one. Under the brainwashed influence of her cult leader she was ordered to stab one of the victims after she was already dead. Since then she has expressed remorse and turned her life 180 degrees. But being a model prisoner and proved rehabilitation have not changed the fact that she’s marked by the stigma of those infamous events that turned utopia inside out and opened the doors to cynicism and despair. My friend shot one of her parole hearin...