The polystylistic recording, "Manayachana", was co-composed by Dai Fujikura and guitarist Shin Sasakubo with an ocean dividing them.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 45:52 | ||
| 01 | Manayachana (the mystery of things) | Manayachana (the mystery of things) | 5:59 |
| 02 | Tuta Wayra (evening wind) | Tuta Wayra (evening wind) | 4:00 |
| 03 | Rumi (stone) | Rumi (stone) | 3:59 |
| 04 | Puyu (cloud) | Puyu (cloud) | 4:37 |
| 05 | Tinkay (offering (to god) | Tinkay (offering (to god) | 8:31 |
| 06 | Anqas (blue) | Anqas (blue) | 5:22 |
| 07 | Paseo Alpaca (passage to alpaca) | Paseo Alpaca (passage to alpaca) | 4:49 |
| 08 | Wawa (daughter) | Wawa (daughter) | 4:14 |
| 09 | Wayta (flower) | Wayta (flower) | 4:21 |
"Manayachana" was co-composed by Dai Fujikura and the guitarist, Shin Sasakubo. Fujikura has offered this background on the music: "As I write this, Shin and I have still not met face to face. One day Shin contacted me through a social networking site, asking if I had any guitar pieces which he could perform in a concert. I told him I do, but I have taken a look at his musical activities, and thought it would be great if we can find a way to co-compose a piece. I proposed this to him and he was over the moon. He was very busy working on his own albums at that time, so I knew he would be in and out of the recording studio. I asked him if he could play some fragments while the engineer was on a break, then send them to me. He played some improvisations and sent me the files. I extracted one note at a time from these samples and started creating the electronic sounds. I then reconstructed the improvisations in electronic form and composed a backing track. I sent the track back to him, he said "It's finished, it's great!" But I had intended that this was merely the backing track. So I asked him to add a layer (again his own improvisation) on top of the track next time he had a coffee break from his own album recording.
Read MoreHe played, recorded and sent it back to me. As usual, his recording was full of material. This was a bit too much for one track, so I started by eliminating a lot of material. Then I reconstructed it again and mixed it. This became the 1st track, which is the title piece, "Manayachana". We both had so much fun making this track, we decided to make another one, then more and more.... Towards the end of the album you can hear a strong south american sound, which reflects Shin's roots, as he was born in Peru and studied Guitar in Peru. I had a suspicion that Shin was a bit afraid to give me this "south american" element. (Maybe he thought, as I am a "contemporary classical composer," I might not like it.) On the contrary, that was why I was initially attracted to working with him. So I decided to make a rhythm track, combining fragments which were taken from whatever he sent to me as a sample, then I looped it. Eventually I sent back the rhythm track, which shocked him, he told me later. He thought I had hired another guitarist to make that rhythm track, which was obviously derived from all the materials taken from his guitar samples. Then he improvised on top of the rhythm track, so effortlessly it was like watching a duck take to water! It was so clear this sound world is "his thing". I am glad I prompted him to produce this, pushing via the music, not verbally. I knew his wife was a traditional Peruvian singer. I asked him if she wouldn't mind contributing to the creation of the album, so she did. Shin sent me what was pretty much the finished song, though once again, I decided to de-construct it. I don't know why, but I combined her voice with the guitar samples, which had nothing to do with the song which Shin had recorded, in order to make a new track. The tempo was different (obviously), and I'm not sure harmonically it made sense. but I worked on it to turn it into one sound world. All the sounds on this album (except the voice - contributed by Shin's Peruvian wife) were originally generated by Shin's guitar. In the end we came up with this album which defies categorisation. I leave it to you to decide if this is electronica, guitar, drone, world music, contemporary classical music, meditative music..... We are happy to release this album from Minabel." Dai Fujikura (edited by Miranda Jackson)
Produced by Shin Sasakubo & Dai Fujikura
Directed by Motoichi Sugita
Engineered by Dai Fujikura & Noritaka Yamaguchi
Recorded: May 2014 @ Minabel Studio, London & STUDIO JOY, Chichibu
Born in 1977 in Osaka Japan, Dai Fujikura was fifteen when he moved to the UK. The recipient of many composition prizes, he has received numerous international co-commissions from the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, BBC Proms, Bamberg Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and more. He has been Composer-in-Residence of Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra since 2014 and held the same post at the Orchestre national d'Île-de-France in 2017/18. Dai’s first opera Solaris, co-commissioned by the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Opéra de Lausanne and the Opéra de Lille, had its world premiere in Paris in 2015 and has since gained a worldwide reputation. A new production of Solaris was created and performed at the Theatre Augsburg in 2018, and the opera received a subsequent staging in 2020.
In 2017, Dai received the Silver Lion Award from the Venice Biennale. In the same year, he was named the Artistic Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Theater’s Born Creative Festival.
In 2019, his Shamisen Concerto was premiered at Mostly Mozart festival in New York Lincoln Center and there have so far been 9 performances of this work by various orchestras.
In 2020, his fourth piano concerto Akiko’s Piano is to be premiered by Martha Argerich and Dai is currently composing his third opera, which will be revealed to the public in the same year.
His works are recorded by and released mainly on his own label Minabel Records in collaboration with SONY Music and his compositions are published by Ricordi Berlin.
http://www.daifujikura.comNew Focus Recordings is an artist led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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