Nonsequittal Rumblings

I’m guilty. I skipped my walk yesterday. Day 3 in to the year, and I’m already getting lazy.

But hey, I got pretty good amount of walk today – exceeding 10k. I’m feeling pretty good about it. Of course, it being so warm–in the 40’s–helps a lot too. Getting warm does come with a price – it’s melting so much snow that it’s making good size puddles on the walking paths everywhere.

Walking music of the day was Berlioz’s comic opera, Beatrice and Benedict, performed by London Symphony and Sir Colin Davis. It’s not a bad piece of music. The only thing is… I don’t know French. Not only the whole thing is in French, they throw in some dialogues. So I was listening to a few tracks of non-musical dialogues in French here and there. Well, okay… I guess it’s not going in my “favorites” folder for now.

Several things have been going on around me this week.

First, on the fansub front.
Froth-Bite took a semi-break during the month of March – we made 4 releases during the entire month. Now, as of April 6th, we’ve already released more than double of that number already for this month, and more are on our way. The Leiji joint project has finally got their senses together, and started working on Space Symphony Maetel again. Finally released first 4 episodes again after taking 6 months break. Some of our own projects had some progress too. Then there is the new joint I’m doing with another group, Minor ja Nai. They’ve lost their translator for MAJOR. And I love that series. So it felt natural to step in and give them a helping hand. They didn’t coordinate the release effort with us very well… They released it while I was still sleeping. But oh well. We’ll live. Sounds like they will be ready with next MAJOR by this Sunday. I better pick my speed up on their project.

On to the music scene.
The leader of the jazz band I belong to has decided to make a career move. He has decided to move to Seattle. So someone had to take over his duties… I was chosen as one of those people. Even though it’s Cessna Jazz Band, there are only 6 of us who actually work for Cessna. We are minorities. Oh well. Poor Carl is brand new to the group, and he picked up co-leadership as well.

And tonight is our first gig under the new management. There are many uncertainties. Will we really survive? We’ll see.

On the different music front, I went to a first music concert in ages. Rajaton is a Finnish a cappella group. It’s a somewhat jazzy, very contemporary, fun group. It was $15 well spent. I love finding all these small, unknown gems. They reminded me of The Real Group – another a cappella group from Scandinavia. I later discovered that I’m not alone having such opinion. They have their similarities, but also differences as well. The Real Group likes to do traditional jazz standards (It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, Come Sunday) to some pop hits (Drive my car)… Rajaton likes the pop covers (Ticket to ride) and their original tunes. It’s fun to listen to all these Beatles tunes a cappella. Hehehe.

And I’m not talking about free mp3 here. Free sheet music! mfiles has put out a few pieces that I can download and print out. Yay! More fresh music! A lot of these are well known, major works. For some reason, I don’t have majority of these. Hey, cool… The only bad thing is, there are quite a few typos in these scores…

Normally, I’m not a big fan of sound track albums. They are nice go with the memory of films or series. But usually, they don’t grab my attention enough to make me say mmmmm! And there’s a good reason to it too: the music contained in sound tracks are usually made to be background music. It’s not supposed to draw the viewer’s attention from what’s on the screen, but it’s supposed to help the viewers get into the mood.

HINOTORI is based on Tezuka Osamu’s masterpiece manga. In this story, Hi no Tori (phoenix) possesses special blood, which can give immortality to anyone who consume it. Through the multiple stories weaved into the series, the artists ask one of the most fundamental questions of life and death.

The music production for the series is just as grand. No fake orchestra is used in this recording, for a change! Czech Philharmonic is worldly renowned orchestra, and they’ve done a good job on these tracks. Some tracks are mix of orchestral work with some feeling of easy listening feelings. Those are so-so tracks.

Tracks I’m impressed more are those tracks set purely in classical mood, some of them played along with Niko, traditional Chinese musical instrument. Track 6, Shingun is a grand work, making me think of Mahler (symph no.2 mvmt1), Brahms (symph no.1), and Saint-Saens (symph no.3 mvmt3). Track 7, requiem is a string trio + Niko. It’s very beautiful. Track 8 is based on Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata, arranged for orchestra and Niko. It’s another beautiful track. It reminds me of Beethoven’s 9th, 3rd mvmt. Track 9 makes me think somewhat of Stravinsky’s ballet, Firebird.

I love symphonic works in general. And the composers/arrangers have done good work to match my taste! I just wished that more of this album was filled with these types of music.

I hesitated to buy this album. I’ve never bought sound track album in my life before this one. And I’m very glad of this purchase. I’m grateful for NHK for planning and producing this series, and doing a fabulous job at it.