 |
Adventure Blog Archives
Adventure Blog posts insightful comments on the latest international news that render us taken-aback in the domain of the adventure facet of life. Adventure-Blog: Sonic-Adventure News Sonic adventure from a land of surprises: December 12, 2007 by John Shand
Is Japanese culture the least predictable on the planet? It ranges from the most understated and exquisitely proportioned pottery to the trashiest TV game shows imaginable. The country's jazz has a similar disparity, from devotion to American bebop, to a refreshing transcultural entity that has produced players as unique as those found in Norway, South Africa or Australia. This music was in the latter camp. Satoko Fujii (piano), Natsuki Tamura (trumpet) and Akira Horikoshi (drums) arrived with a bang: a squall of collective improvisation that let you know an adventure loomed, with all three immediately maximising their instruments' sonic possibilities. Fujii spent almost as much time playing and treating the piano's strings as she did at the keyboard; similarly Tamura employed all the trumpet's potential for slurs, growls, wah-wah mute effects, wispy cries, vocalised rumbles and plumes of pure air. Horikoshi, whose father is a master of Japanese traditional dancing, was a balletic, graceful player of impressive deftness, resolving, say, a massive, rolling tom-tom figure with a tiny bell sound, and incorporating the unmistakable influence of traditional Japanese drumming.
Adventure Blog: Sonic Adventure News (Continued) On one piece Fujii treated the strings so the piano imitated bamboo wind chimes, against which the muted trumpet and whispering percussion were soothing and mediative. As this intensified the trumpet was like a dragonfly, buzzing, hovering and darting across a now dense stream of drums and piano. Suddenly Tamura blew a whistle, and the soundscape instantly changed, Fujii now making eerie, pseudo-electronic noise by scraping the piano strings. He then produced a barrage of sounds not unlike a short-wave radio fighting to find a station, and yet rather than just being an abrasive sonic effect, he somehow made it moving. The trio's ability to hit full intensity as though at the flick of a switch could dilute the effect. If it was not always substantial music, it was engaging and surprising - more like that beautiful pottery, perhaps, but with a hint of the crazy game shows. Adventure Blog Comment:
Music turns an adventure too - a sonic adventure - as everything else on earth does if performed with a spirit of adventure into it. The spirit of adventure is the spirit of playing with what you are doing without ever knowing what your next move is going to be in the next moment to come. You play the move of the moment when the moment comes. You just don't know it beforehand. It gives you a sense of flowing with the flow in the most spontaneous and the most creative way. It's this feeling of flow only that makes a piece of music a great one. And it is this feeling of flow only that makes an action an adventure whatsoever the action may be. And then it is this feeling of flow only that makes life a perennial adventure of joy whichever occupation it is in, and wherever on earth it lives! I invite you to subscribe to my E-zine titled Life Coach, free of charge. This E-zine publishes insightful comments on the latest international news that render us taken-aback in the domains of various facets of life. A not-to-be-missed opportunity! Subscribe to it here: I also invite you to subscribe to my Life Blog - no need to provide your e-mail address here. This RSS feed keeps you informed about new developments taking place on this site. It also harbors 25 journal bloglets posting insightful comments on the latest international news that render us taken-aback in the domains of various facets of life. In order to subscribe to the blog, right-click on the orange RSS button (see buttons up to the left) and then paste the URL into your RSS reader. Or click on add to My Yahoo! button or My MSN or Add To Google button if you keep a personalized home page there. If you are not sure what RSS or blogging is all about, click on What's an RSS Feed? here:
|
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Technorati
Y! MyWeb
