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#1 2007-12-19 00:41:52

Tairaku 太楽
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Registered: 2005-10-07
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Denyer and Iwamoto "music for shakuhachi" CD review

Music For Shakuhachi: Frank Denyer: Composer, Yoshikazu Iwamoto: Shakuhahachi

You are inside a snow globe. But instead of a mini landscape and plastic snowflakes there are notes and sounds. Some of the notes swirl past your head, birds flapping their wings and calling. Others ricochet off the glass of the globe, spinning unpredictably. Some plummet to the floor and splinter into shards while other congeal and swell into soft pulsating masses. Welcome to the shakuhachi world of Frank Denyer as realized by Yoshikazu Iwamoto. A world exploring the dichotomy of claustrophobia versus the infinite.

Claustrophobic: You get the sense of uncompromising personal vision. Playing by rules no one else understands or cares about. Generating music having few precedents and quoting no one. Limited palette. Spare and austere.

Infinite: The sparseness of the proceedings gives minute gestures sweeping powers. The purity of the tone echoes in space, sounds continuing in your head after they are no longer audible. Like a Japanese karensui rock garden which depicts the universe with a few stones and some gravel.

Background on the recording:

The Instrument: Shakuhachi is a Japanese five holed vertical bamboo flute associated with Zen Buddhism. Although its natural scale is pentatonic any degree of microtones can be produced with semi-holing, cross fingering and different embouchure positioning.

The Composer:  Frank Denyer is a British composer whose main concerns center upon explorations of tone, incremental tuning and unusual instrumentation.

The Performer: Yoshikazu Iwamoto comes from the KSK shakuhachi line of Katsuya Yokoyama. This school produces excellent technicians and Iwamoto was one of the very best. “Was” because since producing this recording he disappeared into self imposed exile after renouncing all his human relationships. It is said he no longer plays. This is particularly strange because prior to all this he was an advocate of the shakuhachi life, encouraging students to play as much as possible even if it meant driving the neighbors insane with excessive practice at strange hours.

Shakuhachi has a repertoire known as “honkyoku” which has developed over the last 500 plus years in Japan. It is comprised of clichés and motifs rearranged in different ways to create new compositions using oral transmission. Beyond the notes themselves the timbre of the instrument is a compositional element. Many techniques used in modern Western avant-garde wind playing have been used in shakuhachi for centuries, such as noise (muraiki) and flutter tonguing (tabane). It is these sounds which are the primary element of this recording, divorced from their traditional context.

The Music:

“On, On, It Must Be So”. There are 9 songs on this particular Denyer jukebox and I suppose this one represents the “hit single” of the batch. A remarkable amount of information is compressed into 8:40. The percussion laden soundscape is not dissimilar to that of James Fulkerson’s version of the John Cage composition “Ryoanji” which also featured Denyer on percussion.

“Quite White” is a solo piece exploring pianissimo on shakuhachi with notes that would not usually be played quietly. Iwamoto displays remarkable control of pitch and dynamics on this one.

“Wheat” I-VI are a series of short musical vignettes alternating between percussion/shakuhachi duets and solo pieces. Although the CD is billed as music for shakuhachi it is also a remarkable display of percussion as atmospherics and texture. The percussion never settles into an obvious rhythm, which is very refreshing. Most of the honkyoku are likewise arrhythmic so this is an appropriate correlation with the original shakuhachi repertoire although the end result is something altogether different.

“Unnamed” (the only previously unreleased track on the CD) is a sprawling piece of music revisiting many of the extended techniques and dynamics of the other pieces but takes more time doing it. Like 48 minutes of time! Titling songs “Unnamed” or “On, On, It Must Be So” seems Beckettian and this music shares some of the arid rigor of Beckett’s aesthetic.

Denyer and Iwamoto met while both were on the faculty at Wesleyan University in the ‘70’s. Iwamoto challenged Denyer to compose music for the shakuhachi and promised to learn it no matter how difficult and how long it would take. Thus this CD is replete with technical hurdles handled with aplomb by Iwamoto. For this reason and for the intense compositional discipline the CD is a landmark shakuhachi recording. To be honest, it would not be necessary to get a virtuoso like Iwamoto to tackle extreme notational and technical challenges to get a similar result. A good shakuhachi player with strong improvisational skills and a percussionist could do a superficial imitation in the time it takes to play it. But it’s unlikely it would sustain interest as well as this CD. And isn’t there something heroic about Iwamoto and Denyer creating this mountain of music to climb? It'll be a long time before anything as extreme as this comes along. Anybody who is interested in shakuhachi or contemporary wind music will find this album fascinating.

“Music for Shakuhachi” is available from http://www.anothertimbre.com/


'Progress means simplifying, not complicating' : Bruno Munari

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#2 2007-12-29 13:23:25

Seth
Member
From: Scarsdale, NY
Registered: 2005-10-24
Posts: 270

Re: Denyer and Iwamoto "music for shakuhachi" CD review

fouw wrote:

Of all honkyoku recordings I've heard, some of Yoshikazu Iwamoto's renditions reach me someplace where the others don't.

Yeah, I am a big Yoshikazu Iwamoto fan as well.  His honkyoku have been the recordings of shakuhachi music that I go back to most often.  Very hard to describe what is unique about his sound...perhaps it is that he brings so much patience to his music.

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