A blog about Shamisen and Myself, including performances, workshops, compositions for shamisen, random adventures in Japan, and the photographs I take along the way
私の三味線のための作曲、演奏、ワークショップなどについてお知らせ、また日本の生活や写真などもあります。
This fall, like every fall, is busy with concerts. If you are at all interested in hearing shamisen live, and getting to go to some neat locations, please feel free to attend one of the following events!
今年の秋に演奏する予定は次に書いています。聴きに来てくれば、ありがたいですね〜
October 19th 7:30-8:00pm
Live Shamisen Music with Italian Food
Location: Restaurant Risutorantewadachi (Near Shin-matsudo station) https://r.gnavi.co.jp/c5pt0j710000/chefevent/12/ （Event information in Japanese）
Though this is late coming, I was on TV this past April. I really enjoyed working with BS Japan and thought the program turned out really well. If you ever have a chance of finding and watching it, please do!
I hope to do more projects like this in the near future~
Here is an article on the program! Enjoy~ ここには番組の内容について日本語で書いていますから、クリックしてください
The other week I got the honor of appearing on Rainbow Town Radio in Tokyo, Japan. I was asked to talk about my compositions and future dreams for Japanese traditional music. I even played some of my compositions! Please click on the link below to enjoy the video of the program (in Japanese) on youtube.
In Japan, every season has a reason to hanami (the custom of enjoying viewing flowers) but spring is particularly beautiful. Most people look forward to the sakura or cherry blossom trees, but they aren't the only flowers to look forward too. Here is a collection of photos I have taken this year while enjoying the blossoming of flowers. Enjoy~
Upon entering Northern Illinois University as a young freshman undergraduate I had high hopes of becoming a professional bassoonist and composer for one of the orchestras within the Chicago land area. During my first semester at NIU, I had somehow passed my ensemble audition with flying colors and was placed as the second bassoonist within our school’s orchestra, considered one of the highest level ensembles at the school for wind players. I become so overly confident in my abilities as a performer that I was sure that the same results would happen at my next ensemble audition during second semester.
It didn’t. Another better, older graduate student came along and I, just a little college freshman, was booted out to only play in the wind ensemble. I was devastated.
Luckily for me one of my dear friends from Asian studies, which I had been taking at the time purely out of my long love for Japan since childhood, convinced me that since I would now have my Tuesdays and Thursdays free due to no longer needing to attend orchestra rehearsals, it was time to branch out and try something musically new, different, and very challenging. And what better way to turn everything I knew and understood about western music and music theory upside down than spending the next 6 months learning gamelan, Indonesian traditional gongs, mallet and percussion instruments, all by rote only.
Learning circular musical structure and interlocking melodies/rhythms on pitches that vibrated at ever so slightly different hertz was not only inspiring, it was musically satisfying. Within a week I was completely addicted and even after I passed my audition and was placed back into the orchestra just the following year, I continued to set aside time to study gamelan music and improve my own performing skills. Furthermore, as a composer, it was only a matter of time before I started experimenting with writing new music for the ensemble.
To write the best music possible I read every book on gamelan I could get my hands on, mainly Canadian composer Colin McPhee’s own autobiography A House in Bali and ethnography Music in Bali: A Study in Form and Instrumental Organization in Balinese Orchestral Music. Furthermore I listened to a variety of recordings of new music both inspired by and composed for the gamelan ensemble including Colin McPhee’s Tabuh-Tabuhan: Toccata for Orchestra and Lou Harrison’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with Javanese Gamelan. Lastly I got council from and worked closely with the most experienced players at NIU during that time who also turned out to be my best friend.
最高の作品を作るため、ガムランに関する本を読み耽った。特に、カナダの作曲家であるコリン・マクフィーの「A House in Bali」と「Music in Bali: a study in form and instrumental organization in Balinese orchestral music」は愛読書となった。更に、色々なガムランのための新作品やガムランのアンサンブルから音楽的な影響受けた作品の録音を聴いた。特に、コリン・マクフィーの「Tabuh-Tabuhan: Toccata for Orchestra」とルー・ハリソンの「Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with Javanese Gamelan」は私の心を打った。また、当時の北イリノイ大学で最も経験豊富なガムラン奏者であり、その後の大親友となるジェンから多くを教わったのもこの頃のことである。
Two compositions for gamelan were composed and performed during this time. The first called Lament’s Lullaby for Javanese gamelan and solo bassoon. As the title would hint, this was a simple melodic piece that experimented with how to make the bassoon blend with a foreign ensemble. The next was the overly ambitious composition Semangka Asin for two pianos and Balanese gamelan ensemble.
Balanese Gamelan Notation (pg. 1) for Semangka Asin
Piano Notation (pg. 6) for Semangka Asin
Semangka Asin translates to salty watermelon in Indonesian. The concept of putting salt on a sweet refreshing watermelon not only seems odd, but is also repulsive for most people. However, when you try this strange combination you will find out it not only works, it also creates a whole new flavor you didn’t know was possible. That was the goal of this piece; pit two very different “flavors” (or timbers in this case) against each other in hopes to create something new and refreshing that isn’t normally heard. Though the concept of using pianos to mimic the gamelan sound was nothing new (as Colin Mcphee has experimented extensively on this idea within his own compositions) I hoped that I could also get the gamelan to begin to mimic the pianos (as well as harmonic motion) as the piece progressed and by the end have something that was neither gamelan nor western.
To accomplish this I set up the piece to be a sort of petty fight between the gamelan and piano ensemble. The piece opens with the gamelan playing around by themselves both introducing the traditional gamelan playing style while also setting up the first theme. The gamelan ensemble continue to play around with this theme, adding more layers on top until suddenly the pianos enter, both mimicking the theme and adding in new colors that gamelan couldn’t do before. To combat this the gamelan begins a new interlocking pattern that gets progressively harder as the pianos continue to try to both mimic and out-play the gamelan. This continues until the pianos finally break out in full western harmony which in turn the gamelan try to mimic until they fade out and the pianos finally have a chance to play something completely western that was inspired by all of the musical materials heard before this. After the pianos finish out their newly created theme the gamelan enters again, playing the original theme. From here the pianos and gamelans race to the end, the gamelan expanding on the interlocking theme and the pianos adding new harmonies to that theme that hasn’t been heard up to that point. The piece keeps building and building until a sudden crash from the gamelan gong, ending the entire composition. This is because the gong is the grandfather, protector and last voice in any gamelan piece. In other words, neither the gamelan ensemble or the pianos could ever beat out the gong.
Semangka Asin was performed in the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall at Northern Illinois University on March 23rd, 2008 as the final composition as my graduation recital. The performers included Linc Smelser and Nancy Staton on piano and members from the NIU percussion ensemble, who gave me a year of their life to learn how to not only play my composition by also train on the basics of Balinese gamelan itself. The group was led by my dear friend Jenn and myself (yes, I performed).
This comical piece is by no means a masterpiece, but did set the groundwork for later compositions for other non harmonic/tonal traditional instruments, especially those for shamisen. It was an incredibly fun piece to play and listen to, regardless of some of its more glaring musical flaws. I will also hold this piece, and the premier performance, dear to my heart and maybe someday I will have it performed again, just to show how far I have come as a composer.
This CD was a labor of love, but also came completely out of
my own pocket. Making a CD on your own at a professional level without the
backing of a label or record company is no small amount of money.
First you need to pay for all of the musicians and all of
the rehearsals they need to learn your music. They don’t just come in and sight
read. I guess in theory they could, but you wouldn’t then have the highest
level of recording as possibly. You also need to pay for them to hang out at
the recording location with you all day, for their instruments, transportation
of their instruments (especially in the case of percussion) and food and drinks
so they don’t run out of energy before recording is over. So, basically you
need to be paying for them for multiple full days of work at a full time pay. It
is a lot of pressure on everyone involved and even though professionals make it
look easy, it is anything but easy.
You need to reserve and pay for the recording location. For
this CD I recorded it in a live hall to get the most natural reverb as
possible. The particular hall I choose gave me a lot of control over how much
reverb there was so I could make sure the unique timber for the shamisen would
come through. Because Tetsuya Nozawa was playing all of the shamisen parts and
would have died if I had asked him to play all of the pieces at one time in one
day, I had to reserve the hall three times for three whole days to complete
this project.
You need to pay for the recorder engineers, their equipment
and mics.I was blessed with a
really amazing recording engineer who both taught and guided me while making
sure to let me lead. He brought in the best mics for this recording, set up and
tore down everything and checked for everything I never thought of checking
for. It was great! But everyday we recorded, I had to pay for them to come in
and take off the day to work. It is not cheap!
You need to pay for the mastering of each track. A lot of completing
a CD happens after the entire recording is over. This is both cleaning up the
sound, making sure each instrument is balanced, as well as putting the proper
timing between tracks. There is a difference between a professional doing this
and an amateur (like myself).
You need to pay for the design of the CD booklet. Let me
tell you, pay your designers. Not only do they know things that you would never
have thought of, but also they can create something you would have never
dreamed of. Simply said, my
designer Norei Yoshida did an amazing job!
You need to pay for each page in your CD jacket and
printing. The more pages you add, the more the entire project will cost. I
could have saved costs by only writing my liner notes in one language to cut
down on the page count, but because I thought both Japanese and English was
important, I wrote in both languages which added pages. Also just the raw
printing of the CD, of course, cost money.
The last payments go into distributing the physical CD
itself. Not just shipping costs but did you know you have to pay money for a bar-code? I didn’t know, and it is expensive! Right now I don’t have the money
for it so I am selling myself CD more straight out of my hand method over
Amazon.
Anyhow, I hope this explains the high costs of the CD. I
know not everyone can pay for it but if you can continue to support me through
your words and views that is more than enough! Soon I will put tracks on iTunes
as well so you can hear it all at a much cheaper price (without the liner notes
though =(
It’s finally happened, I am finally done it. I have been
working hard for the last couple of years but there it is, the product of my
labor.
遂に完成しました！2年間に及ぶ労力の結晶がここに！
I have finally released my first CD!
初のCDリリースです！
There are many ways you can get your hands on this CD. You
can head over to my "Buy Colleen's Music" page and see the links there. Depending on what
country you are from, one option might be better than the others so take a
look.
This CD not only
showcases the compositions written while conducting 9 years of fieldwork on
traditional Japanese instruments, but also actively responds to my own
dissertation’s thesis by showing the potentials of traditional shamisen musical theory within modern
music. Each composition’s differing styles and variety of both traditional and
modern playing techniques lets the listener discover how shamisen effectively expresses a multitude of musical colors
without the need of western musical conventions. I believe that traditional
instruments, like shamisen, forces
composers and performers to discover new means of musical expression that have
yet to be utilized within mainstream modern music.
