Yasuaki Fukuhara
Black Dyke Band
Conductor: Prof Nicholas J. Childs
Doyen Recordings: CD454
Yasuaki Fukuhara’s soloist appearance at the RNCM International Brass Band Festival earlier this year performing Simon Dobson’s ‘The Hall of Healing’ percussion concerto was an enthrallingly osmatic experience.
Caged by a panoply of instruments, he still broke free of any fourth wall confines by infusing the packed auditorium in a spectrum soundworld of utterly absorbent virtuosity.
Although the thrilling visual element is absent on this release, he does so again on nine contrasting works, each performed with a clarity and rigour that echoes the underlying ethos of his ongoing Buddhist priest training in Japan.
Transmission
The music is a transmission of intense understanding and compassion, certainty and communication - his bewildering technique cutting malleable shapes of subtle mouldings, lineal phrase development and atmospheric longueurs, never forced or overplayed.
The music is a transmission of intense understanding and compassion, certainty and communication - his bewildering technique cutting malleable shapes of subtle mouldings, lineal phrase development and atmospheric longueurs, never forced or overplayed.
Superbly recorded, and accompanied with complementary understanding on five tracks by Black Dyke Band and Prof Nicholas Childs, the focus never waivers; his creation of colour amalgams, timbres, textures and effects always sounding integral to the music - from the playful jollity of his own xylophone duet ‘Childlike’ (featuring Gareth Hand) to the tender close of gentleness and gratitude of a family day in ‘At Dusk’.
Radiant
‘Daiko’ evokes his own spiritual journey – in this case to the radiant stillness of the Fukusho-ji Temple in Tokyo, whilst ‘Recall to Life’ draws an arc of highs and lows, optimism and reflection. ‘Dark Symmetries’ bubbles with a melodic pulse built over simple, but embracing ostinato accompaniment.
‘Over the Rainbow’ is given a gentle, refreshing wash of soft jazz colour which sits in comfortable contrast with the acerbic interventions of ‘Hard-boiled Capitalism and the Day Mr Friedman Noticed Google is a Verb’, which flickers with a deliberate sense of the transitory pay and display culture of on-line billboard advertising and information exchange.
Simon Dobson’s title track concerto however sits above it all in splendid glory; endlessly creative it its triptych portraiture, enhanced superbly by the immediacy of the recording which delineates the colours and textures of the exotica of instruments
Endlessly creative
It is with the major works that all these elements coalesce; Rodney Newton’s ‘Prospero’s Island’ fully evoking the magical qualities of its central protagonist and those who come into his orbit. Each has a vivid tuned percussion character which retains the enchanted feeling of allegory.
Simon Dobson’s title track concerto however sits above it all in splendid glory; endlessly creative it its triptych portraiture, enhanced superbly by the immediacy of the recording which delineates the colours and textures of the exotica of instruments – tuned percussion, tinkling bells, hard edged metal slabs, gongs, bowls, crotales, drums and wind chimes.
Technical discipline and artistic freedom are mixed with vibrant spontaneity, the result, a mesmeric performance from an artist who offers his gifts with embracing openness.
Iwan Fox
To purchase:
CD: https://www.worldofbrass.com/102414
Download: https://www.worldofbrass.com/102414-download
Wobplay: http://www.wobplay.com
Play list:
1. Recall to Life (Markus Ridderbusch)*
2. Childlike (Yasuaki Fukuhara)
Featuring: Gareth Hand (xylophone)
3. Over the Rainbow (Arlen arr. Max Leth)*
4-6. Percussion Concerto No. 1: Shofuku-ji: The Hall of Healing
i. Hojo Tokimune: The Warrior
ii. Hall of a Thousand Jizo
iii. A National Treasure
7. At Dusk (Yasuaki Fukuhara)
8. Hard boiled Capitalism and the Day Mr Friedman Noticed Google is a Verb (Ben Wahlund)*
9. Prospero’s Island (Rodney Newton)
10. Daiko (Yasuaki Fukuhara)*
11. Dark Symmetries (James McFadyen)
