Hello! I've a couple of releases to tell you about which came out at the end of last year. The run up to the New Year seemed to speed up into a complete blur, and I've found myself crash-landed in January and not at all up-to-date.
First of all is a big one. Orquesta Libre's new album "Plays Duke"
Featuring special guests tap dancer RONxII and pianist Suga Dairo, the band explores the music of Duke Ellington. The arrangements are really quite amazing to play, and arrangers Aoki Taisei and Suzuki Masato have started writing some extremely tricky, high and quiet tuba parts. This is my first recording made on my F tuba, which seems to fit this band well.
You can read a review which describes my tuba solo as a "suggestive muted trombone solo" (erm, nice one...)
HERE
And you can buy it
HERE
And if you can't manoeuvre through the Japanese website, well, the best advice I can give is to come and see us on this summer's European tour and pick one up in person! (More tour details as they emerge, watch this space!)
The next release is the Official Soundtrack of the recent NTV Drama 「東京バンドウアゴン」"Tokyo Bandwagon".
It's another fantastic bit of soundtrack writing by
Kaneko Takahiro (金子隆博), this time featuring a lot of New Orleans funky brass.
You can check it out and buy it HERE
Finally, here's a new release which I'm actually on time reporting!
18th January sees the Japanese Cinema release of the live-action film adaptation of
黒執事, Kuroshitsuji or Black Butler. This was the first action film soundtrack I've done (the other films mostly having been comedies), and it was amazingly scary, exciting and hard work. Brass-wise, it was scored for 2 trumpets, 4 horns, 6 trombones and 2 tubas (the 2nd tuba played on about a quarter of it). These were then double-tracked, and the resulting noise was absolutely apocalyptic! I look forward to hearing the finished recording. Here's the trailer.
