My First Encounter of Tetsuro Yamashita's Music Back in 90's (String Quartet Re-arrangements) 我在上世紀九〇年代時首度與山下達郎音樂的邂逅（絃樂四重奏的改編）
文 / 謝啟彬 Chi-pin Hsieh
I am a violin player, 30 years ago there was very few information about Jazz or much groove oriented (Black) music to obtain locally here, we studied at the classical music department in Taipei, but the only way to know more about music was to buy CDs, especially the imported one (expensive!), then joined some pop music productions & concerts outside of the school, even playing and arranging for the studios/records.
The first time I bought this CD, I was amazed by it's arrangements, harmony-usage and playing with the various right feel, to be honest I didn't know who the hell is Tetsuro Yamashita? But if some Japanese music groups would re-arrange his songs into the String Quartet format, then maybe it's worth to check out who he is? At that time there was no internet and WWW, and aside from American Top 40 on Radio and TV, the only "Something Different" music we could get is the POP music in Japan.
But for those guys, musicians now the younger generation re-explored then and call then "Japanese City Pop" - were even "rarer" and "hard to find" locally, because they didn't belong to the POP idols scene thing in the 80's to 90's (which would sell to the general public), most of these musicians were heavily influenced by American R&B/Soul/Funk/Jazz/Latin...That's what we could sense at that time.
K-POP hasn't arise up yet, and so many Japanese pop songs were bought/copied/learned by mandarin pop songs those days, but not really that black & groove, the local market here would reject much rhythmic and improvised music, like I said, much black-oriented side.
Anyway, the album maybe just a easy listening kinda flavor if you listen to it nowadays, but to me it's quite meaningful, I was searching for something related to my instrument and the way to arrange like that, not only in the string quartet, but also all about arranging, then it gradually led me (Kai-ya too) to the Harmony, Theory, Styles, History, Improvisation, Band Playing......Those the classical school couldn't teach as at that time.
One of my violin seniors who was the same violin teacher loved the album after hearing in at my dormitory, he borrowed it and later returned to me, then I went to Europe for 6 six years, after coming back, I assume the album is somewhere inside of or huge amount CD boxes, but I couldn't find it anymore when he asked me and recalled my memory again several years ago (means he really like the music!), maybe I should dig harder soon then?
But luckily the group "Festa Classico" released some of their works on Apple Music (Not on Spotify and Youtube though), I assume the group is a project-like thing - no fixed members, asking someone to arrange for String Quartet format then record the music - the project I think was called "Classic De Kiku" (Classic to Listen), then followed by a POP artist/composer's name (XXX's Sakuhin Shu, XXX's Work Collection).
This is the one for Tetsuro Yamashita 山下達郎 -
More to explore on Apple Music, and just share some of our learning experiences back in the day.
桑田佳祐一
桑田佳祐二
松任谷由實
井上陽水
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