Spacemaid Band Rehearsal, Hull, November 1994
Live music
Fluterscooter & Friends – “The Fast and the Fluterious, Tokyo drift”
Fluterscooter & Friends – “The Fast and the Fluterious, Tokyo drift” – Live at the Apple store Ginza, Tokyo, April 17th 2012
A few weeks ago I was contacted by Trevor Williams, a photographer based in Okayama and best known for his lightpainting work and asked if I’d like to film an event that was being put on by “Fluterscooter” (a Julliard trained flute player from the USA with an impressive list of credits) which involved live video lightpainting and various other musicians including a Taiko player and a beatboxer.
It sounded intriguing and I thought it would be an interesting exercise to shoot it and produce a short piece about the show, so I said yes.
The nature of the show, which involved Trevor lightpainting with video using a system he developed himself meant that there were some challenges to filming in that it would be very dark and I couldn’t use additional lighting as it would interfere with his lightpainting system.
Time was also a factor as the whole team including ‘Fluterscooter’ aka Andrea Fisher, would only be at the venue for a few hours before the show, so filming some (very) short interviews and enough B-roll would be a challenge.
In the end, I’m happy with what I managed to produce in difficult conditions, the show itself was interesting, the musicians were all very talented and friendly and that made for a fun evening.
Fluterscooter – Flute
Trevor Williams – Lightpainting
Dokaka – Mouth Music
Kazuhiro Namba – DJ
Eva Kesner – Taiko Drums
Erico Itoi- Keyboards
Masao Hirata – A/V Technician
Adam Munnings – Choreographer / Dancer
Jordan Kilik – Dancer
Special thanks to the Apple store Ginza Staff
Nairobi – Part 3 -Kibera Free Party
Within a few days of arriving in Nairobi I found myself at a most unusual concert,organised by the Goethe Institut Nairobi, being paid to take pictures.
The Teichmann brothers, a techno duo from Germany who were in Nairobi recording an Album with members of Ukooflani and Jahcoozi a dub/techno outfit also from Germany were playing an outdoor free concert at St George’s orthodox church in the heart of Kibera on a sunny Tuesday afternoon.
The residents of Kibera came to dance, relax and see what the strange Germans were doing out in the (almost) mid-day sun.
Everyone enjoyed themselves, especially the kids, and it really felt like something interesting was happening, the mixing of different musical styles and the co-operation between the musicians and the residents of Kibera.
Thanks to Katarina from Goethe for hiring me having only met me once, Sam for setting that up ;-), Hasani for driving me there, All the musicians for making me feel so welcome and a special thanks to Andi Teichmann for being a really damn nice guy.
Nairobi – Part 1 – Some of them are drinking wine
“Lavosti and Oren, Impromtu jam, Nairobi April 2010”
A few days after arriving in Nairobi, the house where I was staying, legendary for its parties, was host to the birthday party for a very lovely man called Sam Hopkins (Founder of SlumTV).
He turned out to be a ‘diamond geezer’ and was one of the people who made my Kenya trip so memorable.
The outside patio at the party turned into a jamming area with many musicians from many countries,
(Israel, Kenya, Italy and Germany to name but 4)
Yours truly played his thighs as bongos for so long that my thighs looked like this in the morning:-
But I digress, When I heard the guy in the video, Lavosti from the hip-hop collective Ukooflani, start blowing into his hands and this amazing trumpet like sound issuing forth, I stopped slapping my thighs and ran and got my camera…..
The video above is all I managed to capture before the song ended , more beer arrived and the jam moved on.
Lavosti is backed on guitar by Oren from the band Jahcoozi (there will more of them in later blog posts).
I couldn’t believe he was making that amazing noise with just his hands, and boy could he sing too.
He tried to show me how to do it, but I was embarassingly bad and probably a little too far gone to try by then.
I hope you are as amazed by this little slice of musical genius as I was.
A Symphony
A duet from Brian Scott Peterson and Jim O’connell.
Performed live and without the aid of additional amplification.
Truely an aural delight ;-)
Geek up your ass gently (?)
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about a band, GEEKS, playing outside Shibuya station who made me stop and listen, a rare occurance indeed.
I contacted them after to tell them about my blog post and several emails later I was invited to the last gig of their recent Japanese tour.
Geeks in Shibuya
Geeks guitarist and vocalist ‘Endo’ Geeks bassist and vocalist ‘Mitsu’ A few days ago I was changing trains in Shibuya and before I even got to the down escaltor from the Inogashira line I could hear raucous punk pop blasting out from somewhere, not unusual really for a city that brings a whole new meaning…