Ichiyanagi, Toshi / Maki Ishii

Music For Living Process / Cho-Etsu [VINYL]

Label: Edition Rz Country: Germany

"...monadic sound cells rise to the listening surface, little pebbles are placed on the acoustic board one after the other. Thus the work "Cho-Etsu" from Maki Ishii begins and immediately a tapestry of electronic sounds shapes itself: the spirit of the Japanese gods which dwell in Izumo or the mythical sounds of the Kaidan by Toru Takemitsu (music with concrete sounds for a film based on a novella by Lafcadio Hearn, 1964) push themselves into the foreground of the work.

It is difficult to comment on the work of a Japanese composer and, especially so, when this composer, Maki Ishii, divides his life between Japan and BErlin and unifies in himself both of these cultures. Born in Tokyo in 1936, Maki Ishii studied compositions with Ifuube and Ikenouchi in Tokyo and then with Boris Blacher and Josef Rufer at the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik from 1958 to 1961. In 1969, he was awarded a grant by the Artists-in-Berlin Program of the German Academic Ex-change Service (DAAD) which enabled him to come back to Berlin in order to decide then for double residency of Berlin-Tokyo. He organized numberous festivals in the musical realm involving Germany-Japan. [...]"-from the liner notes