The Piano Beauty - Yukie Nishimura

Thursday, 05 July 2007

Yukie Nishimura is known fondly as 'The Piano Beauty' 鋼琴美人 in Asia. She is a veteran New Age composer and is one who inspires my compositional style. In the early 1990s, her albums were easily available in Singapore, but from the late 90s, her albums stopped coming in to Singapore, probably due to the shut-down of the distributor. Her albums were probably found in YAMAHA music shops over the years, but because of the exorbitant import prices and limited location, I didn't bother to look for them. Yukie is one of the 'victims' to a limited and immature New Age instrumental music market. Other notables like Yanni, Kenny G, also faded into non-existence in the Singapore music market, over-shadowed by other genres like R&B, soul, jazz, rock and pop. Anyway, I came to know that she has released her latest compilation to commemorate her 20 years of music career. "Best of Best - 20 Songs" is now available in Singapore in HMV, thanks to a Taiwan distributor who repackages it with Mandarin titles, and an easy-to-search English album title. Indeed, I find it very difficult to search for non-English artistes because their album names and song titles are not in English. Here's an official music video from one of the songs compiled in this album, called 扉をあけよう or 打開門扇 in Chinese. http://www.yamahamusic.co.jp/download/try/031106/yukie.wmv A simple song with repetitive thematic motifs. A simple video using multiple angles and lightings. Of course, you need a beautiful performer to make the video watchable. Photographers can also learn from the various lighting techniques to create the mood, from high-key to low-key. This album is not a typical 'compilation' album. Yukie actually re-records many tracks, giving familiar tunes a refreshed perspective. Do not expect radical re-arrangements, though, for it is at most renditions in piano solo or new instrumentations.

 

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