Tokyo Up Late

The Tokyo Quartet became one of the most prominent string quartets in the world and continues a reputation for insightful interpretations.

These recordings of Beethoven's early quartets are excellent. The Tokyo String Quartet's technique has never been in doubt and needless to say, just as all great string quartets, the members are perfectly synchronized, playing together as one, as if controlled by a single mind.

It is rare to find a disc as creatively programmed as this BIS release. Enhanced by lovely performances, played with great devotion to the memory of the recently-deceased Japanese master, the repertoire was chosen by conductor Tadaaki Otaka and producer Robert Suff, who organized it not only in the most effective succesion, but in a manner that illustrates the works’ individual meaning and illuminates Takemitsu’s career. All but one of the compositions are from Takemitsu’s late period. The other, the Requiem for Strings, is one of the earliest works to win him fame. Fantasma/Cantos II, for trombone and orchestra, is among the last Takemitsu compositions. Both it and the Requiem provide considerably more forward harmonic motion than the other four works, which are in Takemitsu’s typical “Japanese garden” meditative style, a kind of revival of French impressionism using harmonies that are more like Messiaen’s than Debussy’s.

Though Les Rallizes Denudes, also known as Hadaka no Rallizes, were one of the earliest and most revolutionary Japanese psychedelic rock bands, and have existed off and on through four decades, they are also one of the most obscure, barely known even in their native country. This cult of noise terrorists shrouded themselves in mystery, seldom touring and releasing very few records, usually with no discernible label. Their sound presages the later psychedelic experimental noise of Fushitsusha, High Rise, and others in the current crop more than any other Japanese psychedelic group from the late '60s…

"Gemeaux" (1971-1986) is one of Takemitsu's grandest works in terms of musical arc, scoring and length of gestation. It is written for two orchestras with two conductors, and with solo trombone at one orchestra and solo oboe at the other. As half of it was written during Takemitsu's "modernist apogee" of the turn of the '70s, we find a host of extended techniques, and at one point the soloists even speak through the mouthpieces of their instruments. As the other half of the work belongs to Takemitsu's late period, we find a successful of elegant self-contained gestures, his musical "gardens". The synthesis of two creative periods, however, makes for a piece singular in its impact in Takemitsu's oeuvre.

Although Eric Martin is best-known as the lead singer of rock quartet Mr. Big, he was a seasoned music veteran before that outfit in 1988…

The eighteenth century is probably the most extraordinary period of transformation Europe has known since antiquity. Political upheavals kept pace with the innumerable inventions and discoveries of the age; every sector of the arts and of intellectual and material life was turned upside down. Between the end of the reign of Louis XIV and the revolution of 1789, music in its turn underwent a radical mutation that struck at the very heart of a well-established musical language. In this domain too, we are all children of the Age of Enlightenment: our conception of music and the way we ‘consume’ it still follows in many respects the agenda set by the eighteenth century. And it is not entirely by chance that harmonia mundi has chosen to offer you in 2011 a survey of this musical revolution which, without claiming to be exhaustive, will enable you to grasp the principal outlines of musical creation between the twilight of the Baroque and the dawn of Romanticism.

Miles Davis - Live In Tokyo 1975 (2015) {2CD Hi Hat HH2CD012}
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© 1975, 2015 Hi Hat | HH2CD012
Jazz / Jazz Funk / Fusion / Jazz Rock / Trumpet

Massive electric Miles from the same Japanese tour that gave the world the Panagaea and Agharta albums – tracks that were recorded ten days before the concert that appeared on those records, with different songs as well! The music is a dark brew of funk, fusion, and some surprisingly spiritual currents – thanks to wonderful work from Sonny Fortune on alto, soprano sax, and flute – working here alongside guitarist Pete Cosey, who provides plenty of the fuzzier, freakier moments of the set – as does keyboardist Reggie Lucas! Al Foster's drumming is wonderful – and Michael Henderson's bass will blow you away if you only know his later smoother soul albums – but as usual, Miles is the star once he opens up his horn and steps into the darkness.