Art of The Trio

I am increasingly ever obsessed with the incredibly diverse and sophisticated work of Ryuichi Sakamato -maybe it's that he too was born on January 17th - this post contains three videos from the man starting with his composition "1919" above - here we find Sakamoto playing piano as part of an awe inducing trio featuring the ever excellent British violinist Everton Nelson (known for this work with people like 4 Hero and the Millenia Ensemble aka the string ensemble for Radiohead) and stunning Brazilian Cellist Jaques Morelenbaum. These videos come from the trio's world tour in 1996. Sakamoto is playing an outdoor free gig with Fennesz this July here in downtown NYC - can't wait - he all too rarely performs here even though it's his home. He is also probably one of the most filmed modern musicians - every time I look on YouTube I find at least 20 or 30 new Sakamoto videos.

You can read his diary of the tour here - here's some funny excerpts

"I ask myself why is it that the trio ensemble is so popular with everybody. Why is it that when the material is more pop it doesn't go over so well. Anyway, I know the answer. It's because this trio format is more strong as music. The music is more direct and easier to understand for the public. Even the touch of my fingertips on the piano can be heard to the audience. There are no borders between the audience and us on stage to block the music."

"I must write a requiem. Throughout my music rings the sound of a requiem for the suffering. The requiem is not about melancholy. It is to do with an anger from a deep depression. An anger towards history. An anger towards humans. An anger beyond words. It is an anger that says, "I will make you pay for what you have done to us". No matter how evil of a person you are, every man would shed their tears over their mother. It is not about mourning over something, it is way past all that. But deep down I have a feeling that nothing can ever be done to undo our history. It will be a requiem as an opera. I do not know yet where I will find the story to model my ideas on. Dostoevsky? Dante?"

"I'm in Paris ...Inside the space we are performing in tonight there is a huge cage with thirty birds in it...During the performance I do a little bit of a Messian-inspired improvisation hoping to get the birds to participate in the show. The birds don't join in with us as much as I had hoped. "



"...in Torino...one major problem that night. We got attacked by an army of mosquitos. Before the performance we sprayed ourselves all over with bug repellent. And during the performance we burned a ton of Italian bug repellent incense on the stage to rid ourselves of the mosquitos. To our surprise, as soon as the show started, the mosquitos left us musicians alone.
Jaques said later, "its because the mosquitos appreciate the music, too."

"...in Milano...As in Torino, we had an army of mosquitos attack us again. Unlike the mosquitos in Torino, the Milanese mosquitos showed no appreciation of the music and just went after all of the musicians during the entire performance. By the end of the performance, my back was eaten up."

"Sicily is really one hell of a place. But now I know that it would be really hard to do any business there. Someone tells me later that there were five thousand people there that night but that only a thousand two hundred actually paid to see it. The rest just pushed down the fence and barged their way into the show."

here is the trio performing one of my all time favorite Sakamoto tunes "Thousand Knives"



final bonus: an oldy - the Jazztronik meets Everton Nelson Mix of Modaji's "One and the same" which features the ever skillful arrangements of Mr.Nelson.