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Osaka

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

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

Puppet Show and Duet

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

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

October Dream

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)

Dried fermented soybeans covered in chocolate.

Lyrics?!! Crying seafowl?

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

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

and you thought you could only get it at communion

I found this new dietary supplement yesterday at the drugstore.

Sand Art

Pirate Shmirate

Water Drumming

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

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

Stardust(er)

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

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

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

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.