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I’m home from a two week trip to Japan and it was just incredible! I had strange and wonderful food like the most beautiful bento box that came gift wrapped (it tasted and looked perfect) or a sea urchin in a fish market where they cut it right open in front of me and handed it to me with a spoon (the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten!). I sat in natural hot springs in the mountains in the snow and fed crackers to Nara deer who bowed and tried to steal my bag. Now I’m home and I’ve hit the ground running, I’ve got gigs coming up, lots of rehearsals and a West Pier Song Cycle to compose but I wanted to take a few minutes to tell you about some of my musical adventures in Japan.
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Daikanyama T-Site
I could’ve spent my entire Tokyo trip in Daikanyama Tsutaya Books. It’s the Disneyland of bookshops spread across three buildings connected by bridges. The music section is what every music shop should be: each genre has an extensive collection, lots of headphone docks to sit and listen to CDs and a jazz lounge with a grand piano. What more could you want! I didn’t get to see a gig because there wasn’t one on while I was there but the setting is beautiful and the schedule was full of what appeared to be contemporary Japanese jazz musicians. It's on the wish list for next time .
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The Fortune Telling Emperor and EmpressThere are more beautiful temples than I could have visited in a lifetime! At some of the temples you can get your fortune told in poem form by the Emperor Meiji or the Empress Shoken. They didn’t offer the guarantee of 100% accuracy that I offer but they did have a sign up saying that not all fortunes are good and to remember to be humble, maybe I need one of them at my gigs! It definitely got me intrigued, it’s a good build up and it kind of got my hoping I’d get a bad fortune for the fun but instead I got some very solid advice. |
Jazz Inn Lovely
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I visited a great jazz club in Nagoya called the Jazz Inn Lovely…weird name I know! Confusingly there was a place across the road called the Donna Lee that wasn’t a jazz club. It wasn’t the first time I was stung by jazz club imposters in Japan; I walked by a place in Kanazawa called Body and Soul and spent a while trying to figure out their opening hours before I realised it was a strip club. There was some guy waiting in traffic next to me laughing at the western girl studying the strip club sign in detail.
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Anyway the Jazz Inn Lovely is a great venue with a baby grand piano, perfect sound, knowledgable staff who are just itching to talk about jazz and they even run their own record label. The first night I stopped in I’d missed the gig but stuck around and got chatting to the bartender. Like a lot of jazz places in Japan they have a great record collection and sound system so you can make requests or they’ll recommend tunes based on your preferences. The bartender had very little english but with the universal language of pointing at records and saying things like “Betty Carter! Yes!” while nodding enthusiastically we had a great chat. He put on a record for me by a singer I hadn’t heard of before called Ernestine Anderson. It was recorded live in Ronnie Scotts with Hank Jones on piano and it was brilliant! I ended up giving the bartender a copy of my album and in exchange he gave me whiskey on the house. Good deal!
Next night I stopped in again (I was staying nearby) and there was a piano trio of local guys playing. They played an excellent reharmonised take on Pure Imagination. I bought a CD of a different project lead by the piano player of his own original material with two singers and looking forward to having some time to listen to it!
Next night I stopped in again (I was staying nearby) and there was a piano trio of local guys playing. They played an excellent reharmonised take on Pure Imagination. I bought a CD of a different project lead by the piano player of his own original material with two singers and looking forward to having some time to listen to it!
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Todao Ando - Acoustic IslandI spent a night on Naoshima island, also known as one of the ‘art’ islands because it is full of museums, galleries, art installations and artists. We stayed in an Airbnb place and our host was an painter who also described himself as a haiku rapper! Amazing job description! One of the many many many buildings I visited by Todao Ando was the museum dedicated to his work on the island (Ando is basically the island's go to architect!) and in the basement there was a small concrete cylindrical room with the most perfect acoustics. I wanted to stay in there singing all day long. At first I was alone in there and sang away for a while before realising because of the shape of the room the sound was being amplified through the entire building so people started popping their heads in to see what was going on. I’ll have to make it back someday when there are less people around. It was like a pure, perfect, tiny, spiritual experience. It had me buzzing with ideas for ages afterwards. It’s mad how such a short amount of time in the right environment can be so creatively stimulating. |
Le Club Jazz Jam
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On my last night in Kyoto I stopped into a jam session in Le Club Jazz run by an excellent trumpet player named Michi Fujii and got to sing with some great players and chat with some great people. I wish I’d caught more of the players names but the language barrier and my shyness got in my way. There was a real great mix of professional musicians and students all playing together and making some great music. In this photo there's an excellent local piano player and bassist and a drummer from Vegas that I got chatting to afterwards. He got some jazz education workshop videos up online that are on my list of stuff to check out.
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Traditional Koto Performance
I’ll leave you with a short clip of a traditional Koto performance we went to one evening in a temple in Kyoto to celebrate Sakura; Cherry Blossom season. The strings are plucked with finger picks and it has moveable bridges to adjust tuning. It's got a little motif in the melody that really reminds me of the Harry Potter theme tune, I'm sure that's what they were going for!
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Home Sweet Home - Bonniesongs and funtimes!
This Saturday I’m playing in St. Finian’s Church, Adelaide Road Dublin and it’s a double bill with the otherworldly Bonniesongs! Come see us, get your 100% accurate fortune told, listen to some stories and hear some acoustic, dreamy, experimental pop/folk/jazz music all for seven euros. Bargain! All the info is below, see you there!
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