I fell in love with Joe Hisaishi's music after listening to the soundtrack of Spirited Away. His music style is a combination of different genres like minimalist, experimental electronic, western classical and oriental classical. He composed many scores for Hayao Miyazaki's movies (My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away, Laputa Castle In the Sky, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke,Howl's Moving Castle - Does that ring a bell anyone?). Apart from that, he also composed soundtracks for other mainstream movies which are renown in Japan. Surprisingly enough, not many listeners over this tiny part of the world know about him. (It seems that the narrow mindedness of the people here reflected in their music taste as well... :p)
If you ask me to describe his music, I would summarised in the following words:lush, gorgeous, breathtaking, melancholy, romantic and emotional. In fact, words alone cannot describe Joe's music. Describing his work with a few simple words will be doing a great disservice for this great composer. Personally, I think he composed some of the best musical piece ever since I heard of "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Perhaps I am those sentimental and sappy types, I find Joe's music emotional stirring and I can relate to them very well. Every note of his music captures the tone, the mood and the emotions of listener in perfect timing. It's hard for me to describe it, you just got to listen to his works and feel it.
Ever since then I have been embarking on a quest to search all over cyberspace for his music. Thankfully I found them and so for the last two days, I have been lazing the day away obsessively downloading Joe's music.
Enough of my rambling, here's two samples that I would like to share here to show you how beautiful his music is. Enjoy... :)
Prologue & Spring Rain - Joe Hisaishi
Nostalgia - Joe Hisaishi
2 comments:
In the mood for more Joe Hisaishi eh? His tracks have a very playful tone about it - nice to listen to, but not exactly easy to play on the piano though. :P
Yeah, it's been a long while since I am this obsessive about music. I am totally captivated. :)
Well not all of his music had a playful tone. It depends on the theme. Like the two I just put up on my blog, they are very romantic tunes. They are the perfect scores to play in the background when you serenade with your love ones in a vast room with a fireplace or a room with glass walls overlooking the cityscape during the night. Ah... :)
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