Sonic commotion transcending the image of the instrument: About Misaki Motofuji's first solo album
Misaki Motofuji plays baritone sax in all types of free jazz settings. She also carries out performances focusing on acoustic phenomena, based on sound-art-like concepts and incorporating field recordings. But she says her background is in neither jazz nor art—that she actually studied classical music as a music university student. In the bands she leads, Motofuji creates a wide variety of original compositions, from chamber-music-style pop, jazz and minimal music to experimental works. Making use of her composing and arranging skills, she also creates music for advertising videos. What's more, she sometimes appears as an actor and musician in theatre-style stage productions. There aren't a lot of people who work with so much versatility on so many fronts.
Improviser/composer-arranger/baritone sax player Misaki Motofuji was born in 1992. She started playing alto saxophone in junior high school, and after graduating from high school went on to Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, studying classical saxophone with Hiroshi Hara. Motofuji says she started playing the baritone sax at university and learned playing technique from Yoshiyuki Hattori. She also attended Masanori Oishi's newly launched seminar. Through exchanges with other seminar students, she heard the Acousmonium for the first time, and this led to her interest in sound installations. In this seminar she also learned about Soundpainting, invented by Walter Thompson. It was at that time, she says, that she first played improvised music in a serious way. Motofuji later became a member of Tokyo Sound-painting, led by Ryo Konishi. After graduating from the university, she was selected as a member of the Asian Youth Jazz Orchestra, and in 2015 participated in its tour of six cities in five Southeast Asian countries. In the same year she formed the sax quintet SAX CATS. She subsequently participated in the contemporary music group Konnichi no Ongaku Shudan, and in 2018 launched her band galajapolymo. Motofuji has since performed as a baritone sax player in many sessions, and recently has participated in the Otomo Yoshihide Small Stone Ensemble and Shibusashirazu Orchestra, as well as the performing arts collective Busstrio.
Motofuji gave her first-ever solo performance in June 2020, at Ftarri in Suidobashi, Tokyo. At the time, with many concerts canceled or postponed because of Covid-19, Motofuji was working at home on devising an original setup using effects. In the performance that day, she undertook a minimal drone experiment making creative use of multiple recordings, with overtones and difference tones as themes. Thereafter, she continued researching and developing her own musical grammar while performing in numerous live improvisation sessions. And on May 9, 2022, in a split concert at Ftarri with Masahiko Okura, Motofuji gave a 45-minute solo performance incorporating clarinet, whistle, samples, effects and more, in addition to baritone sax. The entire performance is documented on this CD―Motofuji's first solo album.
Though the performance was improvisational and performed without breaks, the music on this CD is roughly comprised of four sections. (1) The opening part features distinctive faint sounds and delicate textures. First we hear vague, breathy sounds reminiscent of wind blowing through a narrow space; then high frequencies pile up and transform into sounds resembling insect noises. After that, long clarinet tones permeate the space. (2) Next is a section in which clarinet sounds are played in a characteristically wind-instrument-like way. After a series of sounds reminiscent of animal cries that seem to be calling out to someone, multilayered wails are produced with the overdubbing of long tones. (3) The next part is a session with field recordings. Judicious use is made of sound recorded by Motofuji while walking down a Tokyo street on a rainy day, which is answered with sounds produced by the baritone sax and effects―sustained sounds reminiscent of breaking waves; sharp, short sounds and more―interwoven with voice. (4) In the final section, Motofuji's music makes full use of the baritone saxophone's distinctive characteristics. Low sounds reminiscent of subterranean rumblings and didgeridoo-like bass drones reverberate, and psychedelic sound washes over the space, followed by the intensely aggressive roar of the saxophone. Then, in a complete turnaround, the performance ends with the field recording's rain-splattered city sounds and, like a lingering scent, the raspy whines of the saxophone. Of course, these four sections are actually connected, and other divisions could surely be drawn based on one's interpretation. In this album, unlike in the actual concert, the sounds of acoustic instruments, the effects sounds and amplified sounds emerging from speakers, the field recordings and so on are arranged with equivalent value on a level sound plane, so it may be that the interpretation of the album is that much more open.
Partly due to its large size, the baritone sax is associated with the image of powerful, ''masculine'' sound. But the music we hear on this album could never be defined only by that macho stereotype, although it is extremely dynamic. I think this music actually has the potential to transform the image of the baritone sax itself. What made this possible above all is the fact that Misaki Motofuji is a musician of wide-ranging experience and rare talent who has been engaged in activities transcending the narrow definition of the ''baritone sax player''―a musician with the ability to freely incorporate multiple musical contexts and apply them with flexibility in improvisational expression. (Text by Narushi Hosoda / translation by Cathy Fishman)
即興演奏家で作編曲家、バリトンサックス奏者の本藤美咲は1992年生まれ。中学生の頃からアルトサックスを始め、高校卒業後は洗足学園音楽大学へと進学。クラシックのサックスを原博巳に師事した。大学時代にバリトンサックスを吹き始め、服部吉之からも手ほどきを受けたという。また、発足したばかりの大石将紀ゼミを受講。ゼミ生との交流からアクースモニウムを聴く機会があり、サウンドインスタレーションにも興味を抱くようになったそうだ。ゼミではさらに、ウォルター・トンプソンが考案したサウンドペインティングを学び、この時、人生で初めて即興音楽を本格的に演奏したという――のちに本藤は、小西遼を中心とした Tokyo sound-painting の一員としても活動することになる。大学卒業後は Asian Youth Jazz Orchestra のメンバーに選出され、2015年に東南アジア5カ国6都市をツアー。同年にはサックス・クインテットの SAX CATS を結成している。その後、現代音楽グループ「こんにちの音楽集団」への参加などを経て、2018年には自らが主宰するバンド galajapolymoを始動。以降、バリトンサックス奏者として数多くのセッションをこなすほか、近年では大友良英 Small Stone Ensemble や渋さ知らズオーケストラ、さらにパフォーミングアーツ・コレクティブのバストリオにも参加している。
This is the favourite dance or your new curly robots.
They walk and ride on a very monotonous and fast peace bringing love and gamelan breeze from another metalic satellite.
Sometimes the robots are tiny, as ants that dance in oval dishes.. and sometmes they are like trembling hands that move around the floor of interplanetary ships. bardotodolpablopicco
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