January joint practice @ Date City, Fukushima Prefecture

On Saturday, January 28th, at around 8am, I got off at the first station, where there was still snow remaining on the platform and a light snow was falling. This was Date Station, two stations north of Fukushima Station, where I had changed to the Tohoku Main Line.

Among the orchestra members carrying their instruments down the stairs at the station, the conductor, Toshio Yanagisawa, is carrying a white suitcase. Perhaps he chose a suitcase of a striking color because he is based in Eastern Europe and spends his days traveling a lot. While I was thinking this, it was time to change to the bus.

We joined the group that had come from Sendai and after a 10-minute ride we arrived at this month's practice venue, Date City Furusato Kaikan.

It can be verified that a white suitcase does stand out even in the snow.

I don't think any of our members would have gone to the kimono dressing class by mistake, but there seem to be a lot of exams and supplementary classes today, so we are practicing with about 30 fewer members than usual.

Hikari Ito sat in the concertmaster's seat and tuned the instrument. Here is a list of the members who participated today.

In the morning, we had a meeting with someone from the business department of Fukushima Minpo, the local newspaper that is sponsoring the Koriyama performance.

This flyer is full of sophisticated techniques by Rikako Nagashima, TYO's art director. Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Saturday, February 4th . We look forward to seeing you there. The Fukushima Minpo newspaper has also prepared a newspaper advertisement, and this is the draft for that advertisement.

It was a commemorative event for the 125th anniversary of the founding of Fukushima Minpo! We look forward to seeing people not only from Fukushima and Tohoku, but from all over Japan (the Tokyo performance is the day before, on Saturday, March 25th).
Before I knew it, it was time for lunch. As always, there were groups gathered here and there during lunch, and I condensed that moment into a single photo.

As for our secretariat, we received lunch boxes from a local shop at the strong recommendation of Sakura Onami, a university student and trombone player whose family lives in Date City.

Wow, this was delicious. I have eaten many tonkatsu bentos in my life, but this one has a memorable taste. It's delicious cold, so if I have the chance, I'd like to come to the restaurant to eat it hot and fresh.
That concludes today's tourist information for Date City.

In the afternoon, we focused on Mahler's Symphony No. 1, the main piece of the March concert.

It's a big piece that takes 50 minutes to an hour to play through, so the time flies by. During the breaks, we all checked the independent concerts that the members will be holding until March. This is a hand-made flyer made by a university student for a mini-concert in Iwaki, Fukushima this weekend. It's a great idea to include the names of the cities and towns where the members are from!

On Saturday, February 4th, if you have the time and interest, whether you're from nearby or far away, please come and visit Latobu, a shopping center in Iwaki City.
And so the practice time that day passed by in an instant, and the pick-up bus arrived.

However, this January's practice was the first attempt in the history of the Tohoku Youth Orchestra joint practice meeting, and since the performance was approaching, we introduced two consecutive days of practice. Therefore, Toshio Yanagisawa and our secretariat will be staying in Fukushima City, so in the evening we invited some local university students from Fukushima to eat the famous disk dumplings.

This is a deep-fried, fragrant masterpiece from "Kawadori," a gyoza specialty restaurant I've been to before. This restaurant also serves boiled gyoza, which was delicious and filling on a sub-zero Fukushima night.

The issue that was of concern during this weekend-long training camp was what to do with the Iwate members, even though the Fukushima and Miyagi members could commute every day. This was easily resolved by unpretentious kindness. Mari Otsuka, the "mother of the Tohoku Youth Orchestra" in the Fukushima office, who formerly managed the junior orchestra at FTV (Fukushima Television), offered to let a few people stay at her house, and Sakura Onami, a university student majoring in Spanish in Tokyo who recommended a tonkatsu restaurant in Date City, offered to let us stay at her parents' house (for free). When we were holding a gyoza festival in Fukushima City, the following scene was apparently taking place at Kappa Kingdom, a health spa in Date City.

It looks like fun. The gyoza was delicious, but I wanted to be a kappa too. Everyone except Endo, the high school student from Iwate, wears glasses.

Now the date has changed to Sunday the 29th, and we start with a meeting of section leaders to confirm today's practice menu.

That was a very direct overhead shot.

Lead trumpet player Nakamura Yuto will explain the addition and subtraction of parts for the performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, as instructed by conductor Yanagisawa Toshio.

On the second day, the number of participants increased.

With less than two months until the concert, Yanagisawa-san is getting more and more motivated. He said, "We started practicing Mahler last summer, and it's a difficult piece, but the children have absorbed it quite well. However, the folk song we're working on this time is surprisingly difficult. Sakamoto-san's piece and Fujikura Dai-san's arrangement of Tohoku folk songs are both excellent scores for children to play." For example, in this concert, there is a piece called "Miruku Yugafu" that is an arrangement of Okinawan folk songs composed by director Ryuichi Sakamoto, and is performed by Unaigumi, led by Misako Koja, who plays the sanshin and sings it. It is an orchestral score where the sounds of each part clash. Since I'm here, I'll post the PV of the original song.

I've also attached a clip of just the percussion and woodwind instruments that were practiced that day.

This part alone has a very pleasant sound. I hope you will look forward to hearing it performed live.

On the second day, we decided to gather for lunch by birthday month, with the aim of getting to know members we had never spoken to before. Let's start by introducing the members born in August.

Born in September!

It seems that not everyone is making the number 9. If you're making a peace sign by yourself, people will mistake you for someone born in February, percussionist Tsutsumi-kun!

Hmm?! Is it February, March, or April here?

Oh, it's clearly October here. However, I think Nishimura-san is the only person on the planet who ate lunch while holding a bassoon on this day. Next time, please bring a clear prop to lunch with you.

Yes, I was born in January. If Ryuichi Sakamoto, the manager, had been here today, he would have been on this team.

It's great that people born in May have hand power (that's an old analogy, I'm just getting old, sorry!).

Oh, those born in July have a sense of factional unity.

Well, I don't know if it's April or August.
Some people started practicing after their birthday lunch. They are the team that will be performing in the lobby concert at the March concert. A brass quartet!

And how can we call this?

A string quartet with a bassoon? I wonder if Nishimura-san, who was having lunch with a bassoon earlier, is the vocalist and the four string players are the chorus. I'm looking forward to the concert.

When I went to the office waiting room, I found Mr. Otsuka, who had welcomed the members last night, there. "How was last night?"
"Well, all three girls are very quiet. But we talked about what happened on 3/11. We had a hard time, but there were some girls who had even harder experiences."

I was surprised to hear from Ms. Otsuka, the "Mother of Tohoku Youth," about a junior high school girl from Kesennuma who joined the group this year. "What?! That girl who just plays the percussion instruments so calmly?!"
Kesennuma is a place that I have a personal connection to, as I worked for the sake brewery Kakuboshi after the earthquake, my friend became the president of Kesennuma Knitting , and for some reason I bumped into Mr. Onodera, the president of Anchor Coffee, a local coffee roaster, in Tokyo. So when I returned to the hall saying I'd talk to him during the afternoon break, there he was.

I found Miura Mizuho laughing and chatting with violinist Suzuki Minami, one of TYO's funniest girls. "I heard from Otsuka. Can I interview you during the break? If it gets too hard to talk, we can stop right away." "No problem."

It may be a little hard to see, but what Suzuki had on his head was a mandarin orange.

Once again, on the right side of the photo above is Miura Mizuho, a third-year junior high school student from Kesennuma who plays percussion instruments.

What did you do on 3/11? Can you tell us about your experience?

"I was in the third grade at the time, and 9 years old. It was exactly 2:46 in the afternoon, and I was just about to go to my calligraphy class. I was at home with my grandparents. My father, mother, and my mother's aunt, who was my mother's younger sister, were out working, and my younger sister and brother were at nursery school. Suddenly there was a big tremor, and thinking it was dangerous, I ran out the front door with my grandparents. Inside the house, there was a loud noise of dishes breaking, tiles falling, and the walls of the house cracked, and I remember screaming, 'The house is going to collapse!' My grandfather rushed out to pick up my sister and brother, but they couldn't get into the house, so I waited in the car with my grandmother. While in the car, we saw the situation at Sendai Airport on One Seg TV, and at first I thought this was a dream. When my grandfather returned, he remained outside because he was the head of the neighborhood association, but he panicked and came to our car and told us, 'A black wall is approaching, so run away.' We quickly pulled my grandmother to higher ground on the other side of the national highway, We managed to escape. From high ground we watched as the roof of the main house on the ocean side of our house was washed away. As a result, the house next to ours was flooded above the floor level, and all the houses on the ocean side from that house onwards were washed away.
We were able to safely meet up with my father and mother, who were working in the city, and evacuated to the gymnasium of a nearby junior high school, but it was so crowded that we couldn't move. As the strong aftershocks continued, there was no food stockpiled, and only one biscuit was distributed to each person that day. Depending on the school, it was a cookie or a chikuwa. From the next day, we moved to school buildings in each district. A classmate who lived in the same district had a younger brother who went to the same nursery school as my sister and brother, so I knew him well. Three days later, my younger brother, Taiga, was found swept away in his car with his grandparents. My classmate's mother came back from the morgue crying, "Taiga has died!"
I went home a week later, but I was afraid of aftershocks so I evacuated to my father's parents' house on the mountain side. I returned home a month later when the electricity was restored.

That must have been a terrible experience... Did that terrible experience change your outlook on life, your way of thinking about the world, or your way of living?

"I thought the Great Kanto Earthquake was something that only happened in textbooks. But there were areas where everyone was killed, the area was destroyed, and the area was dissolved. I realized that things like this really happen. My younger sister lost two of her classmates at nursery school. One of them was her older sister, who was in junior high school, who was the only one who survived at home. Many people I knew lost their lives. If I had gone to calligraphy class earlier, I wouldn't be alive now. My younger siblings and grandfather were also in danger. There are many people who have suffered more than I have. I often think about this. We were lucky. So I began to think that I am not living only for myself. Children who still had a future ahead of them were also lost. I have to do what I can with the life I've been given."

I was at a loss for words. The screen is still blurry as I type what Mr. Miura said. The question I finally managed to ask was,
What do you want to do with this orchestra in the future?

"Through our music, we want to convey that we, who experienced the disaster, are doing well."

At the end, we took a photo with each participant holding the percussion instrument they were in charge of. Thank you, Mizuho Miura, for sharing your painful memories with us.

When I returned to the practice hall, Yanagisawa-san said, "We'll be playing Mahler's No. 1 through to completion." The trumpet that sounded at the beginning of the first movement sounded like a sound of hope in a funeral, and I couldn't hold back my tears, so I left the hall.

Then, Mahler found a group of four people taking a break after getting off. Fukuzumi, an elementary school student, was reading a paperback book, which was a noble move. Sorry to interrupt, but this old man needs a change of pace. Let's take a commemorative photo!

(I'll practice more and next year I'll be in charge of Mahler or Stockhausen.)

Well, the song that Yanagisawa-san taught most enthusiastically in this practice was "Three Tohoku Songs," a set of folk songs from the three prefectures where everyone is from, arranged by contemporary musician Fujikura Dai. None of us had ever heard of these songs before. Nanbu Yoshare, Tairyo Utairikomi, Soma Bon Uta. Moreover, we had to include chantments unique to folk songs in the middle of the performance. So we asked the people on duty to form a chant specialist team.

The name is "Team Choiser." It is taken from a punny Southern catchphrase. Please look forward to Team Choiser's future exploits.

During this practice, Nakamura, the trumpet player, was looking for volunteers to participate in the concert in Ishinomaki on March 11 this year. 18 members (including those who were not there at the time) responded to his passionate request.

We hope it will be a great performance. We also needed money to donate commemorative photos and frames to the assembly hall of the reconstruction housing complex where the performance will be held. Nakamura-kun and Hattori-san, the viola player, called for donations of 10 yen each, which is reasonable for elementary school students.

We raised 12,030 yen, exceeding our initial goal of 3,000 yen. It was a mini crowdfunding success. I'm so glad.

And this was the paper that was posted in the hall during the two days of practice.

The charity concert "For Peace - Poetry, Music and Flowers" by Sayuri Yoshinaga and director Ryuichi Sakamoto, which TYO Quartet performed at last December, will be broadcast on NHK World and NHK BS Premium . I was in attendance and was deeply moved. Don't miss this opportunity, and don't miss the recording.

So, my first two-day, one-night training trip was successfully completed, and I boarded the Tohoku Shinkansen heading up the line. I was tired, but perhaps because I was so emotional, I couldn't get sleepy, so I chose the most difficult of the three books I brought with me and began to read. It was After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Chance by the contemporary French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux. The author of this simple yet difficult book, who is about the same age as me and who develops speculative realism, is a courageous man who is directly challenging the 200-year history of Western philosophy since Kant.
It matched so well with the story I had just heard from Mr. Miura of Kesennuma that I stopped turning the page.

"There is no reason why anything should exist in this way or continue to exist in that way and not be otherwise. This is true of the things in the world and of its laws. In all reality, everything is subject to collapse."

Here are Miura's words again.
"You have to do what you've been given to do with your life.
We want to use our music to convey that we, who experienced the disaster, are doing well."

There are less than two months until the concert. Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Saturday, February 4th.

We appreciate your continued support for the Tohoku Youth Orchestra.