Cristián Alvear & Taku Sugimoto (guitars). Recorded live in concert at Ftarri, Tokyo, November 2017. This piece was originally composed for ‘Songs’, a duo project with Minami Saeki, a female singer who I have been working with recently, when we had a tour in Europe last October. The piece, ‘h’, was actually completed in an airplane flying from Denmark to Finland where we were to have some concerts. We simply needed a new song (or more) which would be different from what we had played on the tour, because we’d become bored with repeating the same things.
I’ve become less interested in giving the pieces I compose particular titles, so some pieces in my oeuvre have the same titles, for instance, Trio, Quartet, Quintet, and so on. The titles of the pieces I write for ‘Songs’ are especially simple: a, b, c…, or I, II, III…, or 1, 2, 3…
For the concert with Cristián Alvear at Ftarri in Tokyo, I didn’t (or couldn’t) write a new composition. Instead, I thought it could work if we played some pieces from ‘Songs’ with two guitars, particularly ‘h’, since all the melodies or phrases which are repeated consist of the tones of guitar harmonics (i.e. just intonation). I’ve known Cristián for years. He had already played some of my guitar pieces in the past, and I like his interpretations a lot.