Influences: Hiroshi Watanabe

Tomita is certainly one of my heroes. I especially appreciate the live outdoor recordings from his catalog, those performances always stood out and really impressed to me. I found his choice of landscape to go with the music very inspiring and I hope I can do something similar, where I can choose a landscape that contributes to my music and recording.
I was very lucky to have attended a huge live concert at Yokohama bay in Japan when I was a high school student. It was in the summertime and his amazing music was accompanied by a fireworks show. His infamous pyramid control room was there, out on the sea. All I could feel was “WOW”.

I was a high school student when AKIRA came out. I think if AKIRA had a soundtrack other than Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s, it wouldn’t have been nearly as good. The soundtrack really takes the film to a higher level. The animation was super great and no one can deny that, but I have to say music is what made this movie. I believe the soundtrack is what made this movie truly legendary.

When I was in junior high school, I listened to this album so many times. It’s an amazing live recording by 3 genius guitarists. During the same period I loved to listen to heavy metal and more distorted guitars, but this was always amazing and really interesting. I loved the super fast strokes without distortions, the technique and feeling, the passion and the whole atmosphere that captured the audience. I’ve learned a lot much from listening to this album.

I watched this movie in the theater when I was 12 years old, and it’s been 36 years since. To this day I feel deeply moved when I listen to Sakamoto’s beautiful, melancholic tracks from every scene in this movie. This movie is well known and pretty old school, but if you’ve never seen it, I would recommend to watch whole thing. I found the last scene of the movie to be really great. Not only the music, but the all the elements combined were amazing.
Ryuichi Sakamoto was also acting in a very important role in the movie. That was wonderful!

I’ve loved to listen to Corea’s music ever since he was doing Elektric Band, but afterwards I discovered “Children Songs”. This has some of the most wonderful, sweet piano pieces ever, some of which sounded very minimalistic, repetitive and layered into perfect melodies. I love the melancholic balance. I still have the piano scores, although I couldn’t play them that well.

I was waiting for this live show on Japanese TV, and I recorded it on VCR. So I watched this performance many times. During this period, there were so many Jazz festivals in Japan every year. Ever since then, I listened to all of Miles’ electronic Jazz work such as “TUTU”, “You Under Arrest” “Amandra” “The Man with the Horn” …… such an artist.