Concert Year 2017 (Part 1)

Going to concerts, experiencing live music, the once in a lifetime interpretation of a recording or a score, or improvisation in front of an audience. Those are the moments that this blog intended to document. The current global pandemic changed that and there’s no way of knowing when that experience will return as it was until recently. Before the crisis hit this blog was averaging three posts a month. The last show I went to was on March 11th and there’s been nothing but cancellations and postponements since then.

I thought it’ll be a good idea to look back on some of the concerts I attended before starting this blog. The first show I wrote about was a Terry Riley one in November of 2017, so I decided to briefly write about the ones I went to that year and post some pictures as well.

In January of 2017 I saw two legendary jazz artists. First I saw Hermeto Pascoal on the 7th at WWW Shibuya. I remember the show started with his entire band around a microphone with shakers and toy instruments joining Pascoal on piano. He played jazz standards, standards from his own repertoire, lots of different instruments, including a teapot. This show was a blast, definitely one of the best of the year. Same for the second one that month. Charles Lloyd at the Blue note in a quartet ensemble with no piano on the 14th. Reuben Rogers on bass, Eric Harland on drums and Bill Frisell on guitar. Being a huge fan of Frisell’s solo work and his work with Naked City it was a treat to seeing hm playing with Lloyd. I remember that Sadao Watanabe was in the audience and that Lloyd dedicated a full rendition of Forest Flower to him. He didn’t mention the name of the tune when he announced the dedication on he mic, so the gasp of the audience when those first notes started, surprised to witness a performance of that classic epic tune, was something that I’ll always remember. Again, another very special show.

February is always slow for concerts so there were no shows that month. In March I went to three. First I saw Arcturus at Garden in Shimokitazawa on the 12th. It was a Saturday and I went straight from work to that one. It was my first time seeing Sigh and I was blown away with their unique take on extreme metal. 1349 was also on the bill and delivered a more traditional aggressive black metal set that contrasted with Arcturus’ and Sigh’s. On stage Arcturus were all smiles, with the lead singer breaking into subdued dancing from time to time. The songs were amazing, it was a shame the show stopped around 40 minutes in due to the drummer Hellhammer injuring his hearing with an extremely loud monitor. On the 21st I saw András Schiff at the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall. The program included the penultimate sonatas written by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. He also treated the audience to a thirty minute encore that included the whole Bach’s Italian Concerto. That's a picture of concertgoers photographing the encore setlist at the end of the show at the top of this page. The following day I checked an item off of my bucket list and saw The Residents at the Blue Note. These Japan dates were the premiere of their In Between Dreams tour that travelled around the world for the following couple of years. The show was a memorable one. Whenever I go to Blue Note I order the special cocktail of the evening, inspired by the artist performing that night. This was something else. I took a picture, you can see it below.

In April I saw Thundercat at Liquidroom on the 27th. He played for more than two hours. It was a really original take on the trio formation with jazz and funk influences peppered with Zappaesque humor. On June 24th I saw the Arditti String Quartet at the Tokyo Bunka Kainan Recital Hall. They played Hosokawa’s Silent Flowers, which is one of my favorites. They included a world premiere of an Akira Nishimura quartet on the program as well as Ravel’s String Quartet and Bartok’s last one. On July 13th I went back to Blue Note and saw another legend, Eddie Palmieri. It was the perfect setlist. Opened with Oyelo que te conviene followed by Pa’ Huele and it closed with Azucar. The juxtaposition of looseness and microscopic precision that is salsa music was given the royal treatment by this group of musicians, that included names like Herman Olivera, Nelson Gonzalez, Nicky Marrero and Jimmy Bosch, among others. It was possibly the best show out of this bunch.

  
I’ll follow this post with another covering the second half of 2017. Thank you for reading. Please follow me on Twitter for updates at @ConcertTokyo. You can also click the Like button and get notifications at The Tokyo Concert Experience on Facebook.