★Meenna
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*300 copies limited edition* FEN (Far East Network) is an improvised music ensemble made up of Otomo Yoshihide, who lives in Tokyo; Seoul-based Ryu Hankil; Yuen Chee Wai, who lives in Singapore; and Beijing-based Yan Jun. Since FEN's formation in 2008, the four members have gathered and performed in various countries on an intermittent basis. In 2018 FEN exhibited an eight-channel sound installation at the Gwangju Biennale 2018—an international contemporary art exhibition held in Gwangju, Korea—…
Play
*250 copies limited edition* "Play" is a work by Berlin-based composer Hannes Lingens. The score consists of 100 cards on which brief instructions to the musicians are written. The CD "Play" (hitorri-963), which contains two performances of this work, was released on the Hitorri label in October 2023. Tom Soloveitzik, a musician from Israel who was living in Tokyo at the time of that release, had participated in one of the performances on the CD. As a result, a performance, produced by Soloveitz…
Moth Wings Beating Air Incised
*300 copies limited edition*
Sponge mites swarm a black map / Overrun then cut by mayflies / Void / switch /part to Moth wings beating air incised / a graver / lined and block / partial to upper frequencies / Scordatura / its flowers / Vespertine / delirious A night shade / falling into / cardiac arrhythmia / Sharp stop / intaglio Stabbed by silence / The ink was invisible / Dust sprinkled by a pollinator heard as low ground hum / Bare scented wave / faint as rumour Bird beak incision / Hole pun…
Farri Gathering
*2025 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Tam Thi Pham (born in 1990) is a Vietnamese musician based in Hamburg, Germany. She plays the dan bau, a traditional Vietnamese one-string instrument, which she incorporates into improvisation and composing. On the occasion of a visit to Japan in December 2023, Pham performed at Ftarri, Tokyo, on December 11, together with Yukiko Shiina Sakurazawa (contrabass), Minami Takei (percussion) and Masahide Tokunaga (alto sax). This CD contains the two sets (of 3…
Ftarri 16 07 2023
Taku Sugimoto is a Tokyo-based guitarist and composer known worldwide for his highly restrained minimalistic compositions and performances. Wakana Ikeda, also based in Tokyo, is a flute player who also composes music. Sugimoto and Ikeda pursue similar musical directions and often perform together. Pere Xirau is a drummer/percussionist from Barcelona.
Xirau came to Japan in the summer of 2023, and on July 16 he performed at Ftarri, Tokyo, in a trio with Sugimoto and Ikeda. This CD contains two pi…
Variaciones Sobre Las Instrucciones
*250 copies limited edition* Alvear, Bondi & d'incise consists of Cristián Alvear from Chile, and Cyril Bondi and d'incise from Switzerland. The three musicians collaborate frequently in duo and trio formats. This album documents a duo performance by Alvear (guitar) and d’incise (vibraphone, electronics) of “Sleepless Night” (2022), a work by Spanish composer/sound artist Clara de Asís; and a trio performance by Alvear (guitar), Bondi (vibraphone) and d’incise (electronics) of “uno, dos o tres e…
Masahiko Okura / Naoto Yamagishi / Fumi Endo
*250 copies limited edition* Masahiko Okura, a reed instrument player and composer who has been performing actively since the 1990s, has previously released a number of solo and collaborative albums on Ftarri’s sister labels, Hitorri and Meenna. Percussionist Naoto Yamagishi lived in Europe for several years in the 2010s, and since then has been engaged in wide-ranging activities inside and outside Japan, frequently carrying out overseas tours and organizing concerts in Japan featuring musicians…
Utopian Air
*2024 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Beau Beaumont is a sound artist based in Liverpool, England. In summer 2023 she spent two months on a residency program in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture. During that period she invited Tokyo-based musicians Leo Okagawa and Masatake Abe to make a recording with her at her Matsudo accommodation, "Paradise Air." This CD’s one track is 60 minutes, 10 seconds long. Beau Beaumont and Okagawa use electronics, while Abe plays electric bass. The music’s core is a powe…
Memory Is A Poet, Spinning Stories
*2024 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Born in 1964, Tetuzi Akiyama is a guitarist/improviser active inside and outside Japan. Masahide Tokunaga, who was born in 1982, is an always-original alto sax player. Masatake Abe, born in 1993, is an innovative electric bass player on the jazz/improvised music scene. These three musicians of different generations performed together at Ftarri, Tokyo, on June 6, 2021. This CD contains two improvised pieces (about 25 minutes each) from that concert.This is…
Manifestation of Perceptual Variables Latent in the Environment
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* On March 17, 2021, Tetuzi Akiyama, Ayako Kataoka and Kiyomitsu Odai gave a concert at Ftarri in Suidobashi, Tokyo. This CD is a complete recording of the two sets they performed that day (25 and 34 minutes respectively). Akiyama played electric guitar; Kataoka used turntable, electronics and voice; and Odai performed on computer. Internationally renowned improviser/guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama lives in Tokyo and performs frequently both in Japan and overseas.…
How Lonely Sits The City?
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Composer/improviser Magnus Granberg, who lives in Stockholm, has presented outstanding composed works through Skogen, the ensemble he directs, and experimental music ensembles, projects and labels from around the world. He has released three CDs on the Meenna label: "Whose Words?"(meenna-983 / 2017), documenting a trio improvisation performance with Tetuzi Akiyama and Henrik Olsson; and two albums titled "Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth" (meenna-…
But Everything Now Left Before It Arrived
*2023 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Guitarist John Russell, a leading figure on Britain's improvised music scene, passed away on January 19, 2021. Born in December 1954, Russell started performing improvised music in London in his late teens, and for many years he toured and gave concerts not only in the UK and Europe but throughout the world. Known as a Japanophile, Russell traveled to Japan for the first time in 2001, and subsequently visited the country many times, including as recently …
Octet
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* On this album, works composed in 2018 and '19 by Tokyo-based composer/guitarist Taku Sugimoto are performed by musicians based in Berlin. Sugimoto has in recent years been working on a series in which pieces written as scores for solo performance can also be played as ensembles, with each musician using their respective solo score. For example, a score for guitar solo and a score for cello solo can be played as a duo performance by a guitarist and a celli…
And / In
*2023 stock. 300 copies limited release* And / In is the Amsterdam/Berlin-based duo of Heather Frasch and Koen Nutters creating music with objects, text, and vibrations. Shadows and light, audible and inaudible movement, air, liquids, and solids. They conduct musical investigations of objects, bodies, agents, sounds, actions, text and silence. Objects and/in silence. Text and/in sound. Reading and/in actions. A spatio-vibrational theater workshop approaching the meaning and the life of objects a…
September 23, 2021
*2023 stock* Wakana Ikeda is a flute player whose activities range widely, from performances of composed works to improvised and popular music. She also leads the experimental music group Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble. In 2021, Ikeda and Swiss cellist Stefan Thut released the duo album "afar" on the Ftarri label. Guitarist Takashi Masubuchi started playing improvised music in the latter half of the 2000s, and since 2018 has focused on acoustic guitar performance. While Ikeda and Masubuchi are musi…
Be Quiet!!!
Sax player Junji Hirose and guitarist Kazuo Imai, both Tokyo residents born in 1955, are renowned Japanese improvisers who have long propelled the country’s improvised music scene. Australian drummer Darren Moore, who is currently based in Singapore, carries on his performance activity while also teaching at Lasalle College of the Arts.
Darren Moore lived in Tokyo for several years in the mid-2010s. Since then he has often visited the country and performed with Japanese musicians. In 2022 he cam…
Kinetic Vision
Composer Masamichi Kinoshita, cellist Tomoki Tai, and composer/computer musician Takumi Ikeda perform on electrical equipment and electronics in the electric noise project Electric Powered Music. Kinoshita and Tai started playing sessions together around 2008 and were joined by Ikeda soon thereafter. This album includes two live improvised performances presented at Ftarri, Tokyo. The performance on track 1 (42 minutes) took place on February 26, 2023; the track 2 performance (31 minutes), on Oct…
Kanon Aonami Composed Works: Performed by Sean Colum, Kanon Aonami and Fumi Endo
Born in Yokohama in 1994, Kanon Aonami is an alto saxophonist and composer who plays jazz and improvised music at performance venues mainly in Tokyo and Yokohama. She is also a talented composer, and at Ftarri she often performs her own compositions in addition to improvised music. In June 2021 Aonami started appearing periodically at Ftarri; she has performed with musicians including pianist Fumi Endo, alto sax player Masahide Tokunaga, and British guitarist and Tokyo resident Sean Colum.
Focus…
Kinjo No Tabibito
Three musicians of different generations came together to form this unusual free jazz trio. Comprised of veteran musician Akira Sakata (alto sax, clarinet, narration), noted young drummer Raiga Hayashi, and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board)—who has been active on the improvised music scene inside and outside Japan since the 1990s—this much-talked-about band performs mainly at live music venues in the Tokyo area. Naturally, their performances contain the furiousness and wildness characte…
A Right to Silence
On the impulse of Jacques Demierre, DDK trio was created in 2014 at the Festival Météo Mulhouse, France. Made up of three major figures on the international music scene, this trio plays music that is totally oriented towards the present moment. It continues the tradition of "instant composition" - going back to Lennie Tristano and passing through the legendary Jimmy Giuffre trio - and deploys an expressive palette ranging from silence to massive acoustic eruptions, while paying particular attent…