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KURODA Keiko / Life Time -Japanese female songs- KURODA Keiko (vocal), Keiko Kuroda’s debut album which contains Japanese female songs of various age. The oldest song “Gosho-guruma (lost in the scent)” was composed about 160 years ago. Kuroda’s silky voice is suitable for Japanese Language, and it leads to a fusion of Japanese tradition and modernization.
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HIGUCHI Keiko & KANDA Shin-Ichiro / shusi no kakera HIGUCHI Keiko (vocal) Shin-Ichiro Kanda, the pianist and the composer, has been organizing concert series named “night music” of classical, jazz or improvisation with certain themes at times. This recording is from that of the 9th, took place in November, 2009, and has been performed with the singer, Keiko Higuchi. This takes a recital-style, and seems as it presents a new perspective as a whole by making connections to each song. From that point of view, it can be said that it is a contemporary story or a sentimental allegory. They have used various materials; however, all of them are heard in public of modern Japan that was open in perverse form to the world. There are Japanese pops, jazz, the Three-Penny Opera, collaboration of Japanese avant-garde composers and poets, Faust of Goethe, and original tune that is juxtaposed as to control the whole program of the night. Also their performance has uniqueness with such complexes. Agogik and the character of the intervals, the movement of the explosive mercy Bring out something Japanese even when playing jazz tunes. There are compressed signs and symbols between words and playing. They metamorphose by relating to each other and reach to the point where they bear the whole organic nature that are so difficult to reduce to one. Then that simultaneously becomes the perspective of those two musicians. There is an view of Higuch, who has lived in Japan and the US, and looks at the world from singing, butoh, koto, photography and such various fields. Then there is a life of Kanda who reads philosophy books and plays in clubs? And writes music for theater. That is a perspective built up in scaffold of bird’s eye view and everyday life. That is something shivering between jazz and Japanese words whispered in “Barbara-song” and “Unseen Child”. If the role of the art is based on the appropriate presentation and its establishment, then this recited music must serve that. |
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KAWAKAMI Ryuichi / NIDAKUNIDAESHI KAWAKAMI Ryuichi (guitar, vocal) KAWAKAMI Ryuichi was born in Japan 1961. He sings with playing the guitar like any other singer song writers. He started his career as a session player and worked in many japanese vocal music products. Since his middle of 40's, he has focused on his composing and singing his own songs. This album is his first original and all songs were live-recorded with his style of singing with the accoustic guitar. After the world war II, Japan was governed by USA and its culture was coming through at a breath. It might cause the decreasing the japanese songs of the way it was what is by traditional instruments. Instead japanese use the guitar and the folksong means singing with the accoustic guitar mainly in Japan. They sing protest songs against the US army even though the guitar was brought by USA. Japanese makes songs on the western format of music but put the japanese own moral sense on. KAWAKAMI, his style of the guitar was based on Jimi Hendrix or the Heavy Metal Music and sing the complicate society of Japan which stands on the boundary of the east and the west of the world and the sentiment of people living there.For example, "Yanbarukuina no naku yoru ni"(at the night of a gallirallus okinawae crows) is the song for the bird of the japansese endemic which was driven into the extermination by the construction of highways in the japanese high economic growth period. He sings it figuratively what the human's history repeats the tyranny to the weak. Japan has been formed by the distorted capitalism in 60 years after the defeat in the world war II. People can watch and listen only songs invested by big manufactures through the media like the TV or the radio. But if you go out side and visit to a live house, you can't listen any songs that you can listen from the media in reverse. You will listen the words of the cheap laborer and see the performance burnished by the solitary study. The music of KAWAKAMI is the typical japanese song style far from the commercialism, and his performance is extremely great of them all. Recorded in 2009. |
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HIGUCHI Keiko / Love Hotel HIGUCHI Keiko (vocal, piano) This newly pressed CD of Keiko Higuchiﾕs solo vocal piano work has been recorded live at velvet sun (Tokyo) , June, 2008. She has been working as a voice performer over the last 10 years; however, this is actually the first solo CD with her singing songs. It is only the last year she has broke her silence in singing tunes, and now she has picked songs that have been speaking to her personally and also universally well- known pop, rock, chanson, and jazz tunes. She brings those tunes to a whole another dimension with her own interpretation. |