Something I posted about Yoko Kanno and Tokyo.Sora

Thanks to Zoe and Deej, and cousin Alex (not my cousin… long story) for coming to the premiere of the Hachikuro live-action film on Saturday, it was a great evening of Wii Sports, awesome food and wine, and a brilliant translation of a manga and anime to the big-screen, brought brilliantly to life in live-action.

Yoko Kanno scored the Hachikuro movie, and in my travels searching through her back-catalogue found that she scored a film called Tokyo.Sora. A while ago I purchased it on DVD from Japan, and upon viewing it chose it as my favourite film of all time – introspective, graceful, ultra-minimal and beautiful – in both narrative and photography. With the Hachikuro movie DVD that arrived last Monday was the Tokyo.Sora soundtrack, also by Kanno-sama.
It goes for a mere 22 minutes; much like the dialogue in the film, the music is extremely sparse – however;

Yoko Kanno has said in 20 minutes what most artists will spend a lifetime trying to understand.

Every time I listen to a piece of music by this amazing woman, I’m further convinced that she is the most talented and prolific musician of our time, bar none. No other musician, even her husband (Hajime Mizoguchi, who scored Jin-Roh and Texhnolyze among others), has the breadth of styles that she has, nor the talent and extreme creativity to excecute her ideas the way she does. She really is capable of absolutely anything, from traditional European and Japanese orchestral sounds, to Jazz and Blues, to the technologically augmented grandeur of Stand Alone Complex.

The difference is that not only is she capable of all of these tracks that shine with vibrance and creativity, but she’s fully capable of paring it all away and creating a piece of music with only a piano and a vocal that reaches into the deepest and most intimate of emotions. In context to her grand ability, it’s this that truly sets her apart from both musicians with amazing technical creativity, and those who purely create mellow accoustic music.

She truly is both awe-inspiring and humbling at the same time.