michael lambe's scrapbook

Koichi Yoshida had his spring recital at Zac Baran Jazz Bar last night – and the place was packed! I like what he does with his recitals; inviting many other musicians, playing different genres, and generally mixing it up. After an initial honkyoku (traditional shakuhachi) tune to gives us some roots, he warmed us up with a nice jazz combo (quite a bit of swaying and foot- tapping to the Girl from Ipanema) and then a spicy Okinawan set with sanshin player Karura. This was followed by 鹿の遠音 (shika no tone) in which two shakuhachi players emulated the call and answer of two deer in the mountains, by playing across the room to each other. And then an interesting collaboration on a traditional piece with a sitar player (interesting because it totally worked). The final set was a group of original pieces largely by Koichi himself and very trance inducing and meditative in tone. Which was maybe why Mewby fell asleep! Here’s one of the Okinawan songs. I forgot to add the percussionist in the credits because he wasn’t on the original schedule for that song, but his name is 薫 (which unfortunately I don’t know how to read). Thank you, Koichi, for a wonderful musical experience!

You can also see the shakuhachi & sitar piece here.

I went to see the Robert Doisneau exhibition at the Kyoto Station Art Gallery today and it made me want to live in Paris AND become a black and white photographer. Robert Doisneau really knew how to wait for the perfect moment and he knew where to wait too. Pure genius. Every picture is a fascinating character study of a person, or place, or relationship… or dog. Wonderful stuff. I was sorely tempted to invest in the book of the exhibition but didn’t have ￥10,000 on me. Probably a good thing. I’ve got too many books as it is. Anyway, I recommend seeing it if you’re in Kyoto. It continues until February 22nd and you can find it on the 7th floor of the Isetan building.

This month sees Deep Kyoto‘s debut column in Kyoto Visitors Guide. I’m hoping some of those 15,000 a month readers will be interested enough to come back and check out my site. Anyway, I’m getting name recognition and the editor has agreed to do a monthly guest column for Deep Kyoto in return so everyone’s a winner.

A short while ago, another Kyoto blogger Ted Taylor, told me about a music event at TakuTaku, a pretty famous live music venue I’ve been meaning to check out for ages. You can read about TakuTaku here. The event was Soul Flower Mononoke Summit and their guest Ainu musician Oki. Soul Flower Mononoke Summit is an acoustic offshoot of rock band Soul Flower Union developed after the Great Hanshin Earthquake. At that time SFU decided to help keep people’s spirits up by playing for them in the streets, and because they were in the streets they swapped their electric guitars for Okinawan sanshin and supplemented them with old-fashioned chindon style street-band percussion. They are obviously very popular in Kyoto, TakuTaku was packed, and everyone (young, old, families, babies…) seemed to know the songs, singing along, swaying, dancing, waving their hands in the air… A great night with good community feeling. Many thanks to Ted for letting me know about that one. You can read more about the gig and specifically Oki’s performance on his blog here. Here is a video.

If you like that there’s another one here.