Jason Robert Taylor

new blog on site

2010-04-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

Click Here It's on the right side. Still haven't figured out how to link to it.

Osaka

2010-01-21T16:37:00.000-08:00

This Sunday I'm heading down to Osaka to hear the premiere of a piece I wrote a few years ago called "Thoughts on Landing." The Naniwa Guitar Ensemble for whom I wrote the piece will be performing it at the Chakra Cafe.

Mari and I are excited- I've been having a craving for really good okonomiyaki(Japanese savory pancakes) and Mari's been craving soup takoyaki(fried octopus in a pancake-like-batter submerged in a clear soup).

The Swell Season

2009-11-18T18:59:00.000-08:00

Mari and I rarely agree on what movies to rent. We usually settle for romantic comedies- preferably ones set in New York City. There are surprisingly(for me)quite a few good movies in this category. Recently we watched "Once" and I was blown away. I loved the music- especially the title track "Falling"- little did I know that the main actors actully wrote and performed the music.
This morning on my walk to work I was listening to NPR's All Songs Considered's "The 50 Most Important Recordings of the Decade" and I happened to hear "Falling." So as soon as I got to work I did a little research and discovered "The Swell Season" a band consisting of Glen Hansard on guitar and vocals and Marketa Irglova on piano and vocals. They are amazing!
I've been practicing like a crazy man for a concert on December 12th so I don't really have any composing time until after the concert. So I've been recharging- on the lookout for great earth shattering moving shaking music. Recently I've been listening to Josh Ritter's "Girl in a War" and Charles Ives' "Holiday Symphony"
Luka has also been charming me with his homemade international lyrical and melodic stylings based on the classics such as "Twinkle Twinkle" and the Ultraman theme song.

P-rate

2009-05-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

Puppet Show and Duet

2009-05-27T18:58:00.000-07:00

It's warming up and I'm finally able to wake up early to get more quality writing done. I've recently been commissioned to write some music for a Puppet Show based here in Nagoya, it's a cute little show for kids based on the story of the "Three Billy Goats Gruff". We are also talking about a feature length show with a string quartet based on "The Little Mermaid" for adults- we'll see how that goes...

I'm also working on another guitar duet based on the past lives I've supposedly lived. Each movement is based on one life. So far, I've heard of about 4 past lives. They are each interesting in their own right.

The first movement of the piece is based on life as a venetian merchant with a taste for fine wine and spices. It's highly ornamented and in it I want to portray our man gliding down the canals of Venice triumphantly with his treasures secured safely in the boat.

The second movement of the piece is based on life as a buddhist nun living in the mountains of northern Japan in the late 1800's. She had lived a hard life and finally decided to become a nun as most women who had hard lives and no other place to go often did. Near the end of her life she began to dream about being reborn as a man in a place as far away as possible from Japan. In this movement I want to capture the image of her on high ragged cliffs looking off into the vast and desolate ocean.

The third movement is based on life as a native-conflict-resolution-specialist or peace-Man if you will. This movment is very rhythmic, in it I want to depict a sort of imagined ritualistic dance based loosely on Native American-esque rhythms.

The possible intermezzo movement is based on life as a WW2-era artist who loses all of his co-conspirators in art to the war. In this movement I thought I would write a sort of modernist/serialist experimental piece.

In the final movement I wanted to write as if a I were a rocker writing classical music. David Byrne wrote a quartet called "High Life for Nine Instruments." It's a lot of fun and very repetitive in a very rocker writing classical music way. Also the soundtrack for "There Will be Blood" was written by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead it also has the same sort of rocker characteristics and also a rawness that's immediate and accesible. It's a subtle difference but I'd like to try it. I often think about Kurt Cobain's comment that all he was trying to do was imitate a Pixies song- maybe that's what we're all trying to do.

October Dream-Jason Taylor Quartet in Osaka

2009-05-08T19:41:00.001-07:00

You should fast forward through the preliminaries to get to the good stuff;)

October Dream

2009-04-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

The Osaka Guitar Quartet performing my piece "October Dream." I have a video of myself performing this piece when I had long hair- I'll post it if I can find it.

Choco-natto(or dried fermented soybeans covered in milk chocolate)

2009-04-20T17:47:00.000-07:00

Dried fermented soybeans covered in chocolate.

Lyrics?!! Crying seafowl?

2009-04-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

Do fish cry? I just finished writing two pieces for piano and two sopranos. I wrote the words to one of the songs and the other is based on a haiku by Japanese poet Matsuo Basho. The jury still isn't in on my lyrics but the Basho poem has wonderful imagery of a fish's eyes filled with tears.
Vocal music can be so difficult because of those pesky little words and their pesky meanings. I often start out wanting to write a certain kind of piece and then find a poem I love to set to music only to realize that the poem dictates a certain type of music different from the music I wanted to write. On top of that, even if I wanted to use a modern text say something written in the past 75 years then I'd have to get copyright permission. So then I think maybe I should just write a vocalise(a song without words) but that sort of defeats the purpose. There's also the problem that most poetry stands just fine on its own- it really doesn't need any music muddying it up. I love Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas' poetry but I could never set them to music- they're work is just so perfect as it is. So, I decided to write a short text and repeat it over and over out of context so that the meaning of the words become secondary and subservient to the whole. Haikus work brilliantly as they are so open to interpretation.
Oh and here's a little bit of trivia about Basho- he was supposedly a ninja in diguise as a travelling poet- take that in your pipe and smoke it!

Yatter-man

2009-03-18T23:00:00.000-07:00

Luka saw his first movie over the weekend "Yatter-man"

and you thought you could only get it at communion

2009-03-17T01:25:00.000-07:00

I found this new dietary supplement yesterday at the drugstore.

Sand Art

2008-11-26T21:09:00.001-08:00

Pirate Shmirate

2008-11-20T23:31:00.001-08:00

Water Drumming

2008-11-17T18:50:00.000-08:00

When I was 20, I went to see Eiko and Koma performing "River" in the Delaware river in Easton, Pennsylvania. It was my first experience with art that uses nature as not just a backgroung but as an integral component. There was a speaker playing soft shamisen music off to the side and the dancers just drifted down the river out of sight as the sun set- that was the end of the performance. The next performance of "River" was with the Kronos Quartet with music composed my Somei Satoh. They tried to recreate the natural setting on stage and it just didn't have the same impact.

DANCE; Two Dancers Who Never Step in the Same 'River' Twice
By JENNIFER DUNNING
Published: November 30, 1997

TWO DANCERS, A MAN AND A woman, were immersed in the Delaware River, moving almost as slowly as the flotsam of tree branches that wound around them on a late summer night in 1995. Boats slowed so that fisherman, and one barking dog, could watch. Then, suddenly, a heavy night sky broke over Easton, Pa., and poured more water down on the performers.

I
know that Satoh created at least one other enviromental work but I can't seem to find any details on it. I also read of another composer who enacted opera on a lake with two large boats that lasted until the sunset.
There is also the Baka People of South-Eastern Cameroon who do this amazing thing with the river water drumming. I practiced this a lot with my son over the summer.

Baka Girls Waterdrumming

Arranging

2008-11-12T17:22:00.000-08:00

I've been busily arranging some pieces for string quartet and piano for C for some upcoming concerts and in those wee hours of the morning working on a piece for two sopranos and piano using found texts with some of my words mixed in- it's my first attempt at a Japanese text.
Luka had his soccer practice yesterday and I think he found a girlfriend- he just goes crazy when he sees her-he even tried to eat sand for her. Anyway his grandmother gave him a stern talking to about listening to the coach and not eating sand to which he replied by crying in my arms for about an hour. Finally he said "Mama"(which is the name he uses to call his grandmother) angry. Luka sad" which is the first time I've ever heard him use those words in context.

Luka looking out towards Hamamatu bay

2008-11-03T19:21:00.001-08:00

Stardust(er)

2008-10-29T21:08:00.000-07:00

Stardust(er) was commissioned by Chie Morimoto and Yoshio Nomura. The first performance was held on October 25, 2008 at the INAX Live Museum in Tokoname. The performers were Chie Morimoto(vln1) Sachie Umemura(vln2) Yoshiko Numura(vla) Aki Uchida(vcl) and Yoshio Nomura(gtr).

The piece was originally inspired by Neil Gaiman’s “Stardust”

Listen here
thanks to Sam Ishiguro for his audio recording expertise

Sor and The Cambodian chasing the Water Buffalo

2008-10-09T16:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics- the first is my solo performance from last weekend and the other is of a duet Yoshio Nomura and I performing Woratep Rattana-umpawan's piece for two guitars "Three Thai Traditional Songs" the second movement appropriately named the "Cambodian chasing the Water Buffalo"

Starduster and Magic Flute Variations

2008-09-28T22:57:00.000-07:00

Starduster for guitar and string quartet will have its premiere on October 25th at the INAX Live Museum. They're also performing some Puccini songs which I arranged for guitar string quartet and soprano, Debussy's string quartet, and Boccherrini's string sextet.
This Sunday I'll be performing Fernando Sor's Magic Flute Variations for guitar at Yoshio Nomura's Happyokai at the Cafe de Aria in Ozone.

Starduster and myoga- the ginger of forgetfulness

2008-09-07T23:13:00.000-07:00

I've been frantically trying to finish my piece for guitar and string quartet . The piece is inspired by the book "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman, a great book that Glenn over at Oran let me borrow. They have some great new songs that you should check out.

I've also been eating large quantities of myoga or Japanese ginger- a very crunchy and pungent vegetable. They are known for making people forgetful- very dangerous for a forgetful person like me.

Also I have the mastered version of "Getting Here" over at my website. It's the same version that's on this month's copy of GuitarDream a bi-monthly guitar magazine produced here in Japan.

new website

2008-07-15T20:24:00.000-07:00

www.jasonrtaylor.com

Getting Here version 1.1

2008-06-03T21:38:00.000-07:00

Yoshio Nomura and I made a rough recording over the weekend of my piece for two guitars "Getting Here." The mic I used doesn't seem to be the best for classical guitars so please bear with it. We're planning on recording it a few more times until we get it right so just consider this to be version 1.1.Here are the links

Getting Here

I Early Morning Departure

II Over the Water III A possible, but most likely imagined Tribal Dance

Here are the program notes
Getting Here is based on the idea of soul delay. I read about it in Willian Gibson's book "Pattern Recognition." The idea is then your soul can only travel at about 100m per hour, so if you travel over that speed, your soul can't keep up with your body. So, once you arrive at your destination it might take a few days for your soul to catch up with you. I really liked this idea and I started imagining the adventures my soul might have had on its way to Japan...a lonely early morning departure on silent seas...some turbulence and mythical creature sightings...a tribal dance in the shadows...arrival-cherry blossom snow and the final reunion celebrations.

Oriental Dance in Shinjuku

2008-05-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

I went to Tokyo this weekend with Luka and his grandmother. On Sunday we spent the night in Sakura a town near the coast in Chiba. There I finally met Mari's cousin, he was the only member of her family that I hadn't yet met. He's a Latin Ballroom dance teacher- it was fun to hear him talk about Mari when they were kids. He hasn't seen her for about 15 years.
On Monday we trekked over to Disneyland for a few hours- pizza, chocolate popcorn and then onto Shinjuku to see Mari's Tokyo debut. Actually her stage name is Mayardy. It was a great show and her performance was effortless. A lot of people came up to her afterwards with tears in their eyes- they were that moved! It was a great relief for me because she's been stressing about the performance for the past few months.

Two things

2008-04-21T00:13:00.000-07:00

Here's Luka at the park.

Here's me on Japanese TV

this blog is terribly unfocused, I know

October Dream Recording

2008-04-15T02:38:00.000-07:00

October Dream for guitar quartet as recorded by the Osaka Guitar Quartet has been included on the accompanying Cd to this month's Guitar Dream Magazine.

Luka as Elvis

2008-03-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

Luka loves to try on sunglasses, but for some reason he always puts them on upside-down

War-torn countryside

2008-03-10T18:05:00.000-07:00

It's actually the view of my apartment from the riverbank.

Where the truly cultured go to get their hair done

2008-03-09T19:56:00.000-07:00

secret song

2008-02-24T19:16:00.000-08:00

Last night, Mari was putting Luka to bed and while I was turning the lights off in the rest of the house she started singing this song. It was very beautiful and lilting in a natural way. It seemed to spill out like honey or sweet butter. I asked her whose song it was and she told she just made it on the spot. She was worried that it might have been too broadway- it was nothing of the sort. That's all, it was very powerful.

About me

2008-02-21T15:59:00.000-08:00

So, I finally have some time this morning...Melanie from over at My Life as a Gaijin tagged me so here goes...

What I was doing;
10 years ago
I had just graduated college and that summer moved to New York City, where I attended a recording engineering school in the afternoon and worked fixing computers at Baruch Mari and I got married. We had been living together in Japan for about two years. The ceremony was in Hawaii at tiny chapel. Everything was perfect. One of our classmates from the recording school, Yuki and her mother came, and my parents, grandparents and my aunt and Mari's parents and friend Ai were able to come. We swam in the ocean with the giant sea turtles. I was working teaching English in the afternoons and writing and practicing in the mornings. I had my first real paid commission- Takashi Nakamura asked me to write a piece for harp and tenor. My piece "October Dream" was in the works to be published by HomaDream. I also met my mentor, Yoshio Nomura,who has been basically responsible for all of the great musical things that have happened to me here in Japan.

1 year ago
Teaching. Taking care of my one year old son. Writing and performing a piece for two guitars with Nomura-san. Riding my bike to work every morning. Waking up early to write music. Mari opened up her bellydance studio, Yasalam in downtown Nagoya.

Yesterday
I found some time after work to begin putting my orchestral piece "prayers and sighs" into the computer. Had some wine with Mari. Talked with my in-laws over dinner. My Japanese skills are in a down swing- 'been speakin' to much English.

5 snacks I enjoy
1.chocolate
2.hot red bean soup(zenzai)
3.roasted chestnuts
4.chestnut cake(marron braun(sic)
5.rice cakes

5 books I like

1. The Wind-up bird Chronicles- Haruki Murakami
2. Vineland - Thomas Pynchon
3. Against the Day - Thomas Pynchon
4. The Mind's Ear: Exercises for Improving the Musical Imagination- Bruce Adolphe
5. the new Haruki Murakami book

5 things I'd do with $100 million
1. Buy a house on the water in Hawaii with a studio overlooking lots of palm and fruit trees with a small coffee-bean garden in the back.
2. Establish a water based energy source company
3. Charity
4. Give it away- too much responsibility
5. Dig my own hot spring in Gifu

5 places I'd love to run away to

1. Kauai
2. Saipan
3. Vietnam
4. Santa Barbara, California
5. (anywhere that is warm and quiet)

5 bad habits and pet peeves I have
1. PP people who rush in front of you in line to get on the subway
2. BH drifting off into my own world
3. PP people who are mean or rude
4. PP people who take advantage of other people
5. BH being an occasional hermit

5 things I like doing

1. Writing
2. Dreaming
3. Talking with Mari
4. Playing with Luka
5. Traveling

5 things I would never wear
1. A piano tie
2. A candelabra
3. A mullet
4. A sweatsuit of all the same color
5. A football jersey

5 TV shows I like
1. Zenmai Samurai- it's a cartoon created for kids but it's absolutely amazing
2. ojarumaru- another crazy cartoon

3. I rarely watch TV so for now just the above two.
4. ""
5. ""

5 movies I like
1. Wings of Desire
2. Kamikaze Girls(Shimotsuma monogatari)
3. Memories of Matsuko (Kiraware Matsuko no issho)
4. Adaptation
5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

5 famous people I'd like to meet
1. Martin Bresnick
2. Bob Dylan
3. Haruki Murakami
4. Thomas Pynchon
5. Tetsuya Nakashima

5 favourite toys
1. Laptop
2. Ukelele
3. Ipod
4. Toy Piano
5. guitar

5 people I'd like to see complete this
1. Ritchie
2. Glenn maybe he could write about his band

3. my son
4. myself in a past life
5. my other self in a past life

Black Hat

2008-02-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

Imagination

2008-01-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to plug the wonderful composer Bruce Adolphe's book The Mind's Ear: Exercises for Improving the Musical Imagination. It's such a great book for training your inner artist. He takes some of the concepts that are taught at the Juilliard Acting School and then expands them and applies them to music. The book has really helped me to clarify my ideas.

Guerilla Tactics

2008-01-09T17:33:00.000-08:00

I was really impressed with Mayke Nas's piece No reason to panic (2006) not only is the piece a great listen, it's also a great staging idea! Here's the general idea

Unannounced to the audience, No reason to panic served as a surprising entr'acte during a stage changeover in which the strings of the orchestra had to make way for the grand piano, that slowly rose from the catacombs.

Here' a review

"And suddenly this fresh music sounded, right through the hoisting of the grand piano. Flutes that played their ascending lines in different time-divisions, sometimes together with a piccolo. Pulsating double basses. Percussion, that was enlarged with a lion's roar, a howling drum. The conversations died down, the audience feasted upon this spicy intermediate course. The explanation came during the break. The composition turned out to be a commissioned new piece by Mayke Nas (1972) with the fitting title No reason to panic."
(Bela Luttmer in Volkskrant, 7 oktober 2006)

How cool is that! And what a great idea for new composers as a way to get their music performed by orchestras and heard by new audiences! I really believe that these guerilla tactics might be the way to go. It reminds me of those little outtake gems(outros) that you used to find between the Beatle's songs especially on the Stawberry Fields Forever album which Michael Gordon of Bang on a Can used as the basis of his piece "I Buried Paul."
The outro starts at around 3:30

Also this is completely unrelated but I think I just found one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs I've ever heard it's called Twice as Pretty I don't know who the artist is but it's just so moving and the lyrics are so well written.
Enough rambling from me...

Hot music for cold days

2008-01-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

Let's see... I spent most of my Winter Holiday listening to African music, especially Jeli Moussa Sissoko's Kora playing and Moroccan gnawa music- Hassan Hakmoun's The Fire Within: Gnawa Music of Morocco and Mustapha Baqbou's album Djema El Fna- great stuff. I've been trying to capture the rhythmic flavor and playfulness of this wonderful music in a new solo guitar piece called "Falling Through the Cracks" I've also made some good progress on my orchestral piece- a piece that keeps getting put on the back burner. It seems to be one of those pieces I need to write through- like a sort of phase- and once I get through it I can finally climb out on the other side.

We did the traditional Japanese New Year's celebration eating osechi ryori(Japanese New Year's food) and going to the shrine for hatsumode(the first prayer of the new year)- it was pretty relaxing. I don't remember much of the shrine- had a little too much sake. One of my resolutions for this year is to communicate more to people in person- I feel like I spend too much time on e-mail and not enough talking to people in person.

Here's a little something I found of Hassan's on youtube

Texas Pic

2007-11-28T22:31:00.001-08:00

Summer 2007 Houston, Texas

Uncertainty

2007-11-21T19:31:00.001-08:00

Anton Zeilinger, an Viennese physicist who has successfully beamed(read transported!!!) the properties of one quantum particle to another was interviewed in a 2006 sight and sound issue had this to say about quantum uncertainty

Take a particle with an uncertain location and an uncertain velocity. When you look at it through a microscope and locate it, the particle gives you an answer: "Here I am." That means, the location becomes reality at that moment. Beforehand, the particle had no location at all. With the choice of the measuring equipment we've had a major impact on reality. But the answer that nature gives is completely random...I call that the two freedoms: first the freedom of the experimenter in choosing the measuring equipment - that depends on my freedom of will; and then the freedom of nature in giving me the answer it pleases.

I've heard this idea before, but haven't yet heard it explained so clearly. I often wonder if this then applies to the rest of nature. If so, it it similiar to the Buddhist idea of Maya(or many other religions for that matter) in which all we see in this world is an illusion. I think it might be a great idea for a new piece.

Cold Night Into Dawn- I wrote the music to these

2007-11-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

Click on the links to view the clips. I wrote the music in fulfillment of the Music for the Media Course
Opening Scene 1
Opening Scene 2
Opening Scene 3
Bomber Backstory
Nuclear Bomb Making
Cold Night Into Dawn-Final Sequence Part I
Cold Night Into Dawn-Final Sequence PartII

Getting Here in Paris, Portugal!

2007-10-28T21:58:00.000-07:00

The Uno Guitar Duowill perform "Getting Here" at the following locations this upcoming month.
2007/11/2 20:30 L’Archipel Paris
2007/11/9 20:00 Teatro Sa da Bandeira Portugal

In other news I bought roasted chestnuts on Sunday with Mari and Luka and the clerk gave Luka his own little bag of chestnuts. After he ate each chestnut he did a special chestnut dance which involved some head-bobbing and running around his mom. It was quite complex, but expertly executed.

I future is apple pie.

2007-10-25T00:12:00.000-07:00

Interview tests at school... I asked a student what he wanted to be in the future he responded appropriately with "I future is apple pie." On the composing front I finally have a 'break' so I've started sketching out an orchestral piece that's been floating around on the back burners. I've also started writing some more solo guitar music that is very influenced by middle-eastern rhythms.
I bought a plant for my desk. It's a chamaedorea, my table-top palm tree.
Luka and I had a little jam session last night- he was singing and playing the ukulele whilst I was playing the tambourine and toy piano. It was going really well until I broke out my clarinet- it turns out that the sound of the clarinet(or my playing thereof) isn't quite agreeable to his little ears. He ran away to his grandmother's house. Oh well...
concert update:
-Oct 27 2007 St Edmond’s Church London 8:00P The Uno Guitar Duo will perform Getting Here

One more pic

2007-10-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

Luka pics

2007-10-22T23:27:00.001-07:00

Wow! Thank you so much Cord Aria

2007-10-15T00:46:00.000-07:00

Performances of Winter Light by the Cord Aria duo
29.07.07, 20.00
Brasilia, Brasilien (mit Meisterkurs)
03.08.07, 17.00
Rio de Janeiro, Radio Präsentation
03.08.07, 20.00
Rio de Janeiro , Brasilien
08.08.07, 20.00
Porto Alegre, Tasso Corea
09.08.07, 18.30
Porto Alegre, Teatro São Pedro
10.08.07, 20.00
Curitiba, Brasilien
12.08.07, 18.30
Sao Paolo, Braston Hotel
13.08.07, 10-17
Sao Paolo, Baccarelli, Marcelina
06.10.07, 20.00
Kulturzentrum Messestadt Riem (M)
10.11.07, 20.00
Kulturhaus Milbertshofen (M)
18.11.07, 16.00
Bad Aibling, Novalis-Haus

A line from Thomas Pynchon

2007-10-10T23:34:00.000-07:00

This is a line I found in Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day"

Despite having gone in with the determination to cut the place some slack, Kit had seen Y. almost immediately for what it was. The book-learning part of it, two or three good companions not quite crippled into the reflexive and humorless caution which leading the nation would require-that was all just swell, and almost made up for the rest of it.

Getting Here in London

2007-10-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

Getting Here(guitar duet)was performed by the Uno Guitar Duo at Music at St.Barnabas, Manette Street, Soho, London, WIV 5LB at 8:00pm on Tuesday October 9th. It's a pretty interesting 150 year old church with supposedly amazing acoustics. Read more about it here

Falling Through the Cracks in London

2007-10-10T19:43:00.000-07:00

Shibboleth by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo.
click here for the full story

Falling Through the Cracks

2007-10-08T22:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I performed a piece I just finished for solo guitar called "Falling Through the Cracks" at the Higashi Playhouse here in Nagoya. It was a lot of fun. It's the first time I've ever experimented with prepared guitar- I inserted a piece of plastic band between the strings near the bridge of the guitar so that it kind of sounds like a kalimba. The title was taken from a Suzanne Vega line that has haunted me for the longest time:

I've fallen through the cracks and there's no getting back
And I'll never trust whoever gets elected"

I've always been kind of attracted to the idea of falling through the cracks- it's so easy to do on so many different levels and sometimes it's actually a lot more fulfilling.

October Dream in Osaka

2007-09-17T18:17:00.000-07:00

I just came back from Osaka, where the Osaka Guitar Quartet performed my piece "October Dream" along with a slew of great new music. I was really impressed with their performances and the amount of modern repertoire they performed. We all went to an Izakaya(japanese pub) after the concert. It's amazing how convenient Japan is sometimes! The concert hall was a ten minute walk from the shinkansen, it's next door to a Bosendorfer piano showroom and the izakaya was on the 5th floor.

Poster from the attic

2007-08-11T14:34:00.000-07:00

This is a poster from my first band's first performance circa 1990. I just found it in the attic.

Getting Here in Italy

2007-08-07T14:29:00.000-07:00

I just found out that "Getting Here" a duet for two guitars I recently wrote will have it's second performance in Italy by the Masini-Costantino Guitar Duo on September, 5 2007 at 6° Festival della Chitarra 2007 Centro Congressi Marina di Massa, P.zza Betti, Massa (MS), 54100. Yay!
Here is their myspace site:
http://www.myspace.com/duomasinicostantino
and if your Italian is proficient enough here is their website:
http://xoomer.alice.it/dwqma/

baroque lute alarm clock madness

2007-06-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

Recently I've gotten in the habit of using the music I'm working on or being haunted by as my alarm clock. I record the music into my cell phone and then set it as my alarm sound. It's kind of the reverse of the normal process. Usually I'll be haunted by a certain melody or chord progression for weeks or months as I'm writing a new piece, and when I'm finished the piece the haunting melody or idea will have been exorcised or at least trapped on staff paper or cd. It's as if I'm re-haunting myself.
The music I'm using now is the last movement of a four movement work I wrote for baroque lute, a 300 plus year old instrument which has about 16 strings. It's called "Farewell"
Here is the piece in it's entirety

I Initiation
II Puzzle Piece
III Toy for Luka
IV Farewell
The titles of the first and fourth movements are self explanatory, but the second movement, "Puzzle Piece" refers to the idea creating a musical or rhythmic picture piece by piece, so that what you start out is not exactly what it seems and becomes part of something much bigger than itself. "Toy for Luka" is sort of a pun, as in baroque music and earlier there was an actual type of piece called a "Toy." It's the first movement of the four that I completed and I wanted to dedicate it to my son who was constantly around me when I wrote it.

2007-06-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

Flood

2007-06-11T16:27:00.001-07:00

There was a pretty heavy downpour yesterday and Luka decided to take his drum stick and venture out into the middle of it.

Serrengeti Pride Part1

2007-06-07T14:29:00.000-07:00

morning commute

2007-06-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

I've been commuting to work by bicycle since April and I've noticed that a big difference between commuting by train is that time is not as rigid. When you travel by train you have to board a specific train or you'll miss your connection and might end up late for work even if you only arrive there a minute late. Now when I travel by bike I use the other commuters I pass on my way to measure time...The children from my apartment building who leave at the　blow of a whistle. The woman with the baseball cap pulled down low so you can't see her eyes, who's always talking on her cell phone. The guy with the dyed brown hair, light blue jump suit and cigarette dangling from his mouth who always seems to make me feel like everything is okay. The nondescript middle-aged woman I pass when I'm halfway there, my friend, Glenn who's always listening to obscure music on his huge headphones...It feels like a big community- like maybe we should have a party or something. And then there's the occassional exception- people that I'll only see once and never again. People whose destinies are not meant to be intertwined with mine.

Serengeti Pride Documentary

2007-05-24T23:14:00.000-07:00

music by me

Airline Duty Free Ad

2007-05-24T22:54:00.000-07:00

music by me

HOTSUI

2007-05-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to teach my son, Luka, some English words as he is usually surrounded by Japanese speakers. He can say juice and shoes and yesterday he pointed at the moon and said moon. He says atsui which means hot in Japanese, so I've been trying to teach him the English word. I finally got him to say it, but somehow he mixed the two words and he now says "hotsui"

some unrelated craziness

2007-05-17T06:39:00.000-07:00

here's some unrelated craziness!
click here
turn up your speakers!!!

second rehearsal

2007-04-23T17:36:00.000-07:00

The second rehearsal of "Getting Here" went really well last night! It feels good to play my own music.

Getting here/Soul Delay

2007-04-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

I just finished writing a guitar duet based on the idea of soul delay. I read about it in Willian Gibson's book "Pattern Recognition." The idea is then your soul can only travel at about 100m per hour, so if you travel over that speed, your soul can't keep up with your body. So, once you arrive at your destination it might take a few days for your soul to catch up with you. I really liked this idea and I started imagining the adventures my soul might have had on its way to Japan...a lonely early morning departure on silent seas...some turbulence and mythical creature sightings...a tribal dance in the shadows...arrival-cherry blossom snow and the final reunion celebrations.
The piece is called "Getting Here" and I'll be performing it next week in Nagoya at a possibly secret location.

thoughts

2007-02-16T20:03:00.000-08:00

the lifeless buildings reflected in the city river
with their sad dim lights
just dim enough
to seem ghostlike
like lightning bugs
or ancient lanterns,
dare me to find meaning
but i'm on the bridge
straining instead to find hope
in the sad river
labyrinth of concrete
clockwork precision
night
that is so...
quiet
but for the rushing wind of cars
amplified through the light drizzle of rain

i am a worm
buried just a few feet below the surface
listening... waiting...

In which Goleo questions his relationship...

2007-02-08T04:56:00.000-08:00

Goleo and Luka

2007-02-05T17:50:00.000-08:00

Here's the scene where Goleo professes his love for Luka in Japanese

Bellydancing Fun

2007-01-28T22:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Mari had a New Year's party for all of her loyal students and assistants. Luka and I went and had a great time. All the girls fawned over Luka and he just ate it up. I got to play the dumbek(a middle-eastern drum) and perform my pelican dance. That's all for now. check back for updates...

Karaoke commercial

2007-01-23T16:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, one of my students asked me if I was in a karaoke commercial. I couldn't believe that he even recognized me- I appear in the first scene for less than 2 seconds. I've included the link for your viewing pleasure.
click here

The original website is here: http://www.joyjoy.co.jp/top.html

Luka in the sky with rice...

2007-01-16T22:30:00.000-08:00

As everyone knows, people in Japan eat a lot of rice, even my son. The thing is, I never really realized how much rice we ate until Luka came along. Now I find dried pieces of rice all over of the apartment, or stuck in hidden creases of my son's clothes. Don't get me wrong, we clean the apartment and his clothes regularly, but somehow these renegade pieces of rice always seem to get away...

Past Life

2007-01-14T21:46:00.000-08:00

I know it sounds funny but I talked to a telephone psychic about my past life. She's a pretty popular psychic here in Nagoya who used to be an English teacher. She conducts all of her sessions over the phone for security reasons. Anyway, it turns out that I was a buddhist nun in northern Japan during the Edo period in my past life. I had had a very hard life and before I passed away I resolved to be reborn again as far away as possible from Japan. I made it to America- that's probably far enough. The funny part is that I came back.
It's impossible to prove whether the psychic was right or wrong, but either way she can tell a great story and she definitely doesn't sugarcoat her readings at all. Of course, the reading was kind of depressing. I wanted to be a royal prince living in France or a great misunderstood composer. Oh well, maybe I can be a misunderstood composer in this life...

Woops!

2007-01-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

When I first came to Japan, my wife's family would often take us out to the local chinese restuarant. The place was and still is amazing, although it's not much to look at. It's more like a little hole in the wall with grease stained walls and windows, a sign of an authentic chinese restuarant in Japan. Anyway, my Japanese at the time was limited to simple one to two word phrases like "delicious" or "I want to go, eat,etc."
So, one day we were all in a cab trying to decide where to eat for the night and someone mentioned the restuarant. I thought this would be a great chance to show off my Japanese skills to the in-laws, so I said(or thought I said) "That's sounds great! That place has delicious food!" Unfortunately the name of the restuarant like a lot of Chinsese restuarants has the character for "unique" or "珍" as its first character which is pronounced as Chin and the second character is the repitition character "々" and the third character is "店" or ten which means shop or restuarant. So the name of the restaurant is Chin-chin tei but if you drop the 'tei' part like I did that fateful night, it means penis. So, in a cab with my(at that time)future in-laws, wife, and a cab driver I said "I like c--k, it's delicious, I wanna eat it!" and if you think that's bad I thought they couldn't hear me the first time so I said　it at least three or four times. Mari kept elbowing me harder and harder until finally she stepped on my foot and explained what I said in English. Everyone just turned bright red and stared at their shoes. I thought it was the funniest thing that ever happened and of course I was all alone in that opinion.

High Fever

2007-01-02T22:21:00.000-08:00

Luka has had a pretty high fever since New Year's Day. Mari and I have been stuck inside for the past few days, but it's actually kind of liberating. He should be fine. He's been getting lots of rest and he still has his famous appetite and strange love of natto and seaweed. I've just been writing a bit and updating my website. Oh yeah! Mari and I were cleaning the other day and I found this CD of a piece for six guitars called Thoughts on Landing. When I wrote it I didn't really think it was such a great piece but on second listening it's not too shabby. The following is a performance from Washington State. The idea I wanted to convey was of landing in a strange new place.
ThoughtsonLanding.mp3
SummerFestival.mp3

Sketching

2006-12-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

It's my last day of work before Christmas vacation. I've been trying to write a piece for orchestra and finish up a film music course so I'll hopefully get some more time to do that. It's quite cold here in Nagoya today and the clouds are like white sheets covering and stifling the sounds of the city. It's kind of like a dream sequence in a movie. I just sketched a short piece for solo guitar here at my desk at school. The music speeds up as it goes down and slows down as it moves up. I'm thinking about making a set of songs for solo guitar to play through on a rainy day they would all be short and whimsical and fun to play. I'm trying to free myself more when I write. It's difficult because there are so many voices I hear when I actually sit down to write-voices of old teachers, music critics "this is too simple" or "this isn't modern enough" or my favorite one "This is too beautiful" I've actually heard this a lot- not in reference to my music but friends have said that when they're writing they have to be careful about making something too beautiful. I'm pretty sure thay don't mean it literally, but I still kind of like to go the opposite direction...