★Meenna
Ftarri 16 07 2023
Taku Sugimoto is a Tokyo-based guitarist and composer known worldwide for his highly restrained minimalistic compositions and performances. Wakana Ikeda, also based in Tokyo, is a flute player who also composes music. Sugimoto and Ikeda pursue similar musical directions and often perform together. Pere Xirau is a drummer/percussionist from Barcelona.
Xirau came to Japan in the summer of 2023, and on July 16 he performed at Ftarri, Tokyo, in a trio with Sugimoto and Ikeda. This CD contains two pi…
Variaciones Sobre Las Instrucciones
*250 copies limited edition* Alvear, Bondi & d'incise consists of Cristián Alvear from Chile, and Cyril Bondi and d'incise from Switzerland. The three musicians collaborate frequently in duo and trio formats. This album documents a duo performance by Alvear (guitar) and d’incise (vibraphone, electronics) of “Sleepless Night” (2022), a work by Spanish composer/sound artist Clara de Asís; and a trio performance by Alvear (guitar), Bondi (vibraphone) and d’incise (electronics) of “uno, dos o tres e…
Masahiko Okura / Naoto Yamagishi / Fumi Endo
*250 copies limited edition* Masahiko Okura, a reed instrument player and composer who has been performing actively since the 1990s, has previously released a number of solo and collaborative albums on Ftarri’s sister labels, Hitorri and Meenna. Percussionist Naoto Yamagishi lived in Europe for several years in the 2010s, and since then has been engaged in wide-ranging activities inside and outside Japan, frequently carrying out overseas tours and organizing concerts in Japan featuring musicians…
Utopian Air
*2024 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Beau Beaumont is a sound artist based in Liverpool, England. In summer 2023 she spent two months on a residency program in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture. During that period she invited Tokyo-based musicians Leo Okagawa and Masatake Abe to make a recording with her at her Matsudo accommodation, "Paradise Air." This CD’s one track is 60 minutes, 10 seconds long. Beau Beaumont and Okagawa use electronics, while Abe plays electric bass. The music’s core is a powe…
Memory Is A Poet, Spinning Stories
*2024 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Born in 1964, Tetuzi Akiyama is a guitarist/improviser active inside and outside Japan. Masahide Tokunaga, who was born in 1982, is an always-original alto sax player. Masatake Abe, born in 1993, is an innovative electric bass player on the jazz/improvised music scene. These three musicians of different generations performed together at Ftarri, Tokyo, on June 6, 2021. This CD contains two improvised pieces (about 25 minutes each) from that concert.This is…
Manifestation of Perceptual Variables Latent in the Environment
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* On March 17, 2021, Tetuzi Akiyama, Ayako Kataoka and Kiyomitsu Odai gave a concert at Ftarri in Suidobashi, Tokyo. This CD is a complete recording of the two sets they performed that day (25 and 34 minutes respectively). Akiyama played electric guitar; Kataoka used turntable, electronics and voice; and Odai performed on computer. Internationally renowned improviser/guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama lives in Tokyo and performs frequently both in Japan and overseas.…
How Lonely Sits The City?
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Composer/improviser Magnus Granberg, who lives in Stockholm, has presented outstanding composed works through Skogen, the ensemble he directs, and experimental music ensembles, projects and labels from around the world. He has released three CDs on the Meenna label: "Whose Words?"(meenna-983 / 2017), documenting a trio improvisation performance with Tetuzi Akiyama and Henrik Olsson; and two albums titled "Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth" (meenna-…
But Everything Now Left Before It Arrived
*2023 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Guitarist John Russell, a leading figure on Britain's improvised music scene, passed away on January 19, 2021. Born in December 1954, Russell started performing improvised music in London in his late teens, and for many years he toured and gave concerts not only in the UK and Europe but throughout the world. Known as a Japanophile, Russell traveled to Japan for the first time in 2001, and subsequently visited the country many times, including as recently …
Octet
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* On this album, works composed in 2018 and '19 by Tokyo-based composer/guitarist Taku Sugimoto are performed by musicians based in Berlin. Sugimoto has in recent years been working on a series in which pieces written as scores for solo performance can also be played as ensembles, with each musician using their respective solo score. For example, a score for guitar solo and a score for cello solo can be played as a duo performance by a guitarist and a celli…
And / In
*2023 stock. 300 copies limited release* And / In is the Amsterdam/Berlin-based duo of Heather Frasch and Koen Nutters creating music with objects, text, and vibrations. Shadows and light, audible and inaudible movement, air, liquids, and solids. They conduct musical investigations of objects, bodies, agents, sounds, actions, text and silence. Objects and/in silence. Text and/in sound. Reading and/in actions. A spatio-vibrational theater workshop approaching the meaning and the life of objects a…
September 23, 2021
*2023 stock* Wakana Ikeda is a flute player whose activities range widely, from performances of composed works to improvised and popular music. She also leads the experimental music group Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble. In 2021, Ikeda and Swiss cellist Stefan Thut released the duo album "afar" on the Ftarri label. Guitarist Takashi Masubuchi started playing improvised music in the latter half of the 2000s, and since 2018 has focused on acoustic guitar performance. While Ikeda and Masubuchi are musi…
Be Quiet!!!
Sax player Junji Hirose and guitarist Kazuo Imai, both Tokyo residents born in 1955, are renowned Japanese improvisers who have long propelled the country’s improvised music scene. Australian drummer Darren Moore, who is currently based in Singapore, carries on his performance activity while also teaching at Lasalle College of the Arts.
Darren Moore lived in Tokyo for several years in the mid-2010s. Since then he has often visited the country and performed with Japanese musicians. In 2022 he cam…
Kinetic Vision
Composer Masamichi Kinoshita, cellist Tomoki Tai, and composer/computer musician Takumi Ikeda perform on electrical equipment and electronics in the electric noise project Electric Powered Music. Kinoshita and Tai started playing sessions together around 2008 and were joined by Ikeda soon thereafter. This album includes two live improvised performances presented at Ftarri, Tokyo. The performance on track 1 (42 minutes) took place on February 26, 2023; the track 2 performance (31 minutes), on Oct…
Kanon Aonami Composed Works: Performed by Sean Colum, Kanon Aonami and Fumi Endo
Born in Yokohama in 1994, Kanon Aonami is an alto saxophonist and composer who plays jazz and improvised music at performance venues mainly in Tokyo and Yokohama. She is also a talented composer, and at Ftarri she often performs her own compositions in addition to improvised music. In June 2021 Aonami started appearing periodically at Ftarri; she has performed with musicians including pianist Fumi Endo, alto sax player Masahide Tokunaga, and British guitarist and Tokyo resident Sean Colum.
Focus…
Kinjo No Tabibito
Three musicians of different generations came together to form this unusual free jazz trio. Comprised of veteran musician Akira Sakata (alto sax, clarinet, narration), noted young drummer Raiga Hayashi, and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board)—who has been active on the improvised music scene inside and outside Japan since the 1990s—this much-talked-about band performs mainly at live music venues in the Tokyo area. Naturally, their performances contain the furiousness and wildness characte…
A Right to Silence
On the impulse of Jacques Demierre, DDK trio was created in 2014 at the Festival Météo Mulhouse, France. Made up of three major figures on the international music scene, this trio plays music that is totally oriented towards the present moment. It continues the tradition of "instant composition" - going back to Lennie Tristano and passing through the legendary Jimmy Giuffre trio - and deploys an expressive palette ranging from silence to massive acoustic eruptions, while paying particular attent…
2 Compositions
I have collaborated with Bruno Duplant on various projects over the last three years since I participated in Presque Rien (Rhizome-s) in 2013. Only a few people have met actual Bruno, and I have only worked with him via virtual exchanges. It was when I was feeling the limitation to pursue compositional projects only in the net that the idea of this collaboration was brought up. I immediately reacted with hesitation but Ko emailed me; "It would be very interesting to record materials like this. I…
Ftarri's Harmonium
Why is there a harmonium (reed organ) at Ftarri? It all goes back to the Ftarri Festival held in Tokyo in November 2019. A quartet made up of Klaus Lang (harmonium), Johnny Chang (violin), Samuel Dunscombe (bass clarinet) and Michiko Ogawa (clarinet) was planned for the festival's final day, so Ogawa quickly purchased a used harmonium for Lang. As she lives in Berlin, Ogawa and Ftarri decided that the harmonium would be housed there temporarily and used in Ftarri concerts.Composer Masamichi Kino…
Trio (2CD)
These recordings were mostly made during the daytime at the residency place and concert venue Petersburg Art Space in Moabit, Berlin. While we were recording, people would sometimes show up in the kitchen area on the other side of the room for a coffee break, probably not aware that we were recording music for a potential album. Even though this could have led to frustration and many retakes, it ended up quite unproblematic, and it was nice how it made us aware of both the fragility of our music…
Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth
Magnus Granberg is a composer/musician living in Stockholm. Through experimental music ensembles/projects such as his own group Skogen (which he has led since 2005), Ordinary Affects, Ensemble Grizzana and Insub Meta Orchestra, he has produced outstanding works revealing new compositional possibilities. Performances of his compositions have been released on various labels, chiefly the UK’s Another Timbre. Granberg has earned a great deal of international attention and critical praise. In Novembe…