Florent Ghys @ Noguchi Museum, 13 June 2010

As the rain was nearing, the performance was moved inside from the lovely sculpture garden. It was probably better for the music anyway.The main room with Isamu Noguchi’s works is wonderful in its own right. The Noguchi Museum is one of my favourite places in New York and it was the perfect setting for this afternoon’s concert with the French composer and bassist Florent Ghys. The young man was a new acquaintance to us, but being a part of the adventurous Bang on a Can collective was enough of a recommendation for Yoko and me to take the bus-subway combination to Queens. A decent sized crowd had gathered at the museum for the event, lounging on the floor between the sculptures.

Florent Ghys stood in the corner of the spacious room alone with his bass and laptop computer. The bass itself was a stripped down version of a double bass, electrically amplified without the wooden body. Florent, who is classically trained and has played with the Paris Opera Orchestra, would today play his own music, which combines elements from contemporary music, rock, jazz and electronic. For the following 70 minutes we, together with the entire audience, would sit transfixed by the enticing sounds of Florent Ghys.

While the bass was naturally in the leading role, the composer used it in a very interesting way. In many pieces, Florent Ghys would set up an ostinato or a pattern that he would play on the bass, either bowing or picking the strings, while recording it on the laptop. He would then let the computer repeat the recorded piece while he would lay over textures or a melody on top of it. Many of the melodies he created were truly beautiful. As a highly skilled bassist, he would play them high on the strings making the big instrument sound like a cello.

In between the pieces, all of which were clearly circumscribed and never extended beyond their predefined extent, Florent would communicate with the audience in a shy and friendly manner. He would tell a few words about the pieces and express his joy at playing in this beautiful place.

Not all of the music was instantly played and replayed on location. Some of the background tracks had been recorded in advance by the composer himself. They contained mainly percussion and some bits with guitar. On several tracks he used voice samples. These were mostly in French (for which he modestly apologized to the American audience) but one was in English and another one in Japanese. Apparently, he was not sure what the Japanese text was about, so he asked whether there was anyone in the audience who could tell. A Japanese woman with short spiked hair and big white-framed sunglasses said it was about bad news, which again brought out a ‘sorry’ from the composer. (According to Yoko it was actually about local elections, which may or may not be bad news.)

One of the best pieces included an American weather report as a voice track around which Ghys had composed the music. According to Florent himself, weather reports (alongside things like hair dryers, numbers, girls and blinkers) are amongst his interests. The melody he bowed on top of the music and the weather report had a melancholy beauty that was quintessentially French.

Perhaps the most interesting moment to me was rather early on in the concert. It was a composition built around a sampled French woman’s voice. In the middle of the piece when the woman continued speaking all other music stopped and Florent followed the melody and rhythm of her speech on the bow. The effect was unique and demonstrated both the tonality of the French language and Ghys’ impeccable ear.

There was a surprising variety to the music. Some tunes were rather avant-garde exploring the harmonies of the strings. Others had a pulse that made you want to tap your foot, even if the time was not always straightforward. One of the last pieces combined both. It was, the composer explained, the first piece ever in which he had sampled a speech that had a political message (as opposed to, say, a weather report). This one was about closing down of factories and consequent lay-offs plaguing France.

What a delightful event this was. The music was both captivating and innovative. Florent Ghys is a composer and musician whose explorations I am sure to follow in the future.

Music for Shakuhachi and Koto, Noguchi Museum, Queens, NY, 15 May 2005

It was the perfect setting: the peaceful museum dedicated to the works of the Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi. The only problem was that there was thunder in the air on this pressingly warm spring Sunday afternoon. There was a drizzle, which forced the organizers to move the concert inside. We were sitting on the concrete floor between Noguchi’s symbolic sculptures. Behind the performers two large windows gave to the garden where the leaves in the trees were still the light green colour of spring. We were set for a performance by two premier talents of Japanese music.

Ralph Samuelson came on stage with his shakuhachi. Samuelson who has studied the ancient bamboo flute both in Japan and in the United States under such masters as Goro Yamaguchi, Kodo Araki V and Shudo Yamato, adheres to the classical tradition of the Kinko school. His playing is exquisite in its sensitivity, the voice of his flute clear and lovely. He started the concert with a traditional piece, Kumoi Jishi, which has a charming folk music like melody.

Next Masayo Ishigure appeared and sat down behind the koto, the 13-string Japanese zither of which she is a master. Ishigure-san hails from Gifu in Japan and has won numerous accolades for her skill as a koto player. Since she moved to New York in 1992, she has performed in prestigious venues, like Lincoln Center and the Carnegie Hall. She teaches Japanese music at Wesleyan University. She had chosen to start her part of the concert with a contemporary composition, Tokimeki, by Hideaki Kuribayashi. Seldom have I heard such a variety of tonalities and rhythms played on a koto. Masayo Ishigure is a very versatile musician.

Having observed the weather during his colleague’s performance, Ralph Samuelson declared that the clouds had cleared and the sun was fast drying up the garden. It was thus time to move outside where the performance area in front of the old factory gate was quickly set up. The Noguchi Museum (www.noguchi.org) is an amazing haven in the middle of a working class industrial neighbourhood in Long Island City in the Borough of Queens. The museum itself has been established in an old factory building. From the street in front of it, Manhattan skyline is clearly visible across East River.

Ralph announced that here was a perfect natural acoustic, with trucks, airplanes, children – and the distant cry of the deer. For that was what the next tune was about. Shika no Tone, a piece belonging to Honkyoku or solo shakuhachi repertoire developed by Fuke sect Zen monks in the 18th century, represents the sound of two deer calling each other in the distant mountains. This quiet, meditative piece indeed drowned the urban sounds from the surrounding barrio as we sat on the ground basking in the afternoon sun.

Masayo Ishigure returned, her spring kimono with its depictions of white and pink cherry blossoms against black silk immaculate. Her second piece also was contemporary koto music, a famous 1985 piece of Tadao Sawai’s called Tori no Yo Ni. Sawai had once been her teacher in Japan and she played the beautiful and rather complex piece with extraordinary verve, evoking images of birds flying freely in the big, open sky. This, as the previous piece she had played inside, took the traditional stringed instrument to exceptional distances, blending varied influences into the Japanese sensibility.

Finally, the two masters joined together in the last piece, Yoshizawa Kengryo II’s 19th century Chidori no Kyoko or Song of Plovers. This piece, like so much of Japan’s music and art, too, was nature inspired. The piece featured two waka poems sung by Masayo Ishigure in a sorrowful ceremonial style. Her hypnotic voice and use of micro-tones was like that of monks chanting. The poems – the first from the 10th century Kokin waka shu anthology of court poetry; the second from a 12th century anthology Kin ‘yo shu – both were about the song of the plovers. The two songs were separated by a serene instrumental interlude, or tegoto, which Ishigure and Samuelson played with exquisite grace.

The music had calmed the afternoon and, I am sure, added years to our lives. All stress and bad thoughts were gone, as we sat in the sculpture garden under the white birches with their leaves fluttering in the wind.

© Juha I. Uitto 2005