Another musical week

Much to my enjoyment, this week turned out to be rather musical. One for Carlos' concert, followed with an extensive drumming session the following day, wrapped with a jazz evening in Kichijoji.

The "Melodies from Gedo Senki" concert by Carlos Nunez presented itself to be a very nice event. It is the first one that Carlos had done in his series of promotion for the particular album. The concert was advertised to be including two very distinguished guests, one is Aoi Teshima, a raising young singer who was the voice talent for the Therru/Tehanu caracter in the movie as well as Akiko Yano, a prominent jazz and pop musician who's known for her exquisite piano talent and unusual singing voice.
Along these outstanding collaborators, two that I felt very privileged of getting to know for the first time is Marie Nishiyama, the harpist (amazing harpsicord she plays!) and also Aska Kaneko, leader of the Aska Strings. Meeting them all backstage was a wonderful perk, they are such highly accomplished musicians, wonderfully talented, but they are very down-to-earth and above all... NORMAL.

The concert was held in the beautiful NHK Hall. I was lucky for scoring a very good seat, which is practically in front of the stage (7th row from the front).
Having been to so many of Carlos' performances, I have always told myself that one of these days I will no longer be impressed by it. Boy, was I wrong! One thing that you can always count on Carlos, is his extreme unpredictability. The man is a genius and one of the few people who is always pulling something completely out of the blue and making it work.
The concert started with a beautiful tune from Cinema Do Mar, I can't remember whether it was "Women of Ireland" or "Tristan and Isolde", it was smooth and soothing. And then after a short speech in Japanese (nice try!) and gaining a few loud chuckles from the audience, the concert progressed with songs after songs from the new album. It was equipped with a very nice slide show, snippets from the movie, as well as other images, interesting lightworks and closed with a little interesting entourage by the Tokyo Bagpipe Society. That was the first half of the concert.
The second half, we were lulled into the concert again with songs from different movies and collaborations by other musicians and finally closed with some Irish dancing by some hundred people in the audience.

Ah... good times!

Taiko drumming the following day was good too. Sensei was teaching us how to do what we call the nidan uchi. It is when you're doing a piece of music using two taikos on both sides. Usually two drummers will be playing an identical piece simultaneously, in front of each other, and then swap position. This can be complicated and highly dangerous when we're not used to do it. Oh, dear, I think I got hit by one of the drumming partner like 4 times. Also I hit my thumb several times myself, too... OUCH!

Friday night, my comrades Odaiko Div and Annie Bananie came up with an idea that we should all go out for a bit of music. The choice fell on Tokyo's renown underground jazz spot "Sometime Piano Hall" in Kichijoji. This is a live house with Blue Note quality, but with only a speck of the cover charge. Everyday this place will have different performers, with 2 or 3 stages per day.
The evening that we went, we had a jazz quartet performing. One funky all white-haired-drummer, very cool middle aged gentleman as the bassist (double base) and beanie-headed pianist, and lastly the singer (interesting hair style, she carried the hair of Jon Bon Jovi at his worst; but if you're willing to look beyond her hairstyle...) with a very cool air to add to her husky voice and for always getting completely absorbed in her songs.
The night was fine, the chat was true and the joy was fulfilling.

Ah, life... it can be bizarre and challenging at times, but it is nothing that a little bit of music can't solve.
I thank you, all esteemed musicians, for the music.

Muchas gracias!