Post by cornetcheese on Dec 5, 2005 12:06:47 GMT
I`ve recently been thinking about a serious problem that has creeped into brass band playing over the last decade or so, the problem with musical shape and balance in performances.
Since I`ve been in tokyo, I`ve been playing with the Tokyo Brass Concord, a band I played with and conducted every time I came to Japan. The standard is certainly high, the players have a good technique as you would expect from over here and perhaps the sound of the individuals is not of such a high quality as we have in the UK, but it is the style with which the band play that has always impressed me. The band always has a fantastic balanced round quality sound despite their individual players not having the best tone quality. The reason for this? Their regular conductor, Kinji Inoue (81 years old!!) founded the band and is very famous as a conductor in Japan. In every rehearsal I have seen with him, I always feel I learn so much as he does focus on technical detail a lot, but the majority of his rehearsal is spent talking about musical shape and balance. The result is that the band, although not too powerful, always play with real precision and a fantastic sense of the music they are playing.
This has led me to think, why do so many bands in the UK neglect this? I can safely say in all the years I have been involved in bands, the number of performances of real quality and style are far outweighed by the ones that have been loud, hard, fast and rank. I guess this is a contesting problem, as the wind bands in japan (who almost all compete) suffer from this too. Perhaps too many conductors are scared to focus on really making the players play with good balance and style for fear of a bad contest result, as we all no loud, hard, fast and rank wins contests too often?
I have to say, I certainly have tried since I first came to Japan to try and address this by working a lot on phrasing and balance in rehearsals, but I fear that there`s no way we can reverse the trend of poor musicianship that has snuck into band playing. It`s a real shame because, although Japan is a "developing" brass band nation, ironically their bands play with a higher standard of musicianship than many of ours do now!!
Sorry for the rant, it`s been a real bee in my bonnet!
Since I`ve been in tokyo, I`ve been playing with the Tokyo Brass Concord, a band I played with and conducted every time I came to Japan. The standard is certainly high, the players have a good technique as you would expect from over here and perhaps the sound of the individuals is not of such a high quality as we have in the UK, but it is the style with which the band play that has always impressed me. The band always has a fantastic balanced round quality sound despite their individual players not having the best tone quality. The reason for this? Their regular conductor, Kinji Inoue (81 years old!!) founded the band and is very famous as a conductor in Japan. In every rehearsal I have seen with him, I always feel I learn so much as he does focus on technical detail a lot, but the majority of his rehearsal is spent talking about musical shape and balance. The result is that the band, although not too powerful, always play with real precision and a fantastic sense of the music they are playing.
This has led me to think, why do so many bands in the UK neglect this? I can safely say in all the years I have been involved in bands, the number of performances of real quality and style are far outweighed by the ones that have been loud, hard, fast and rank. I guess this is a contesting problem, as the wind bands in japan (who almost all compete) suffer from this too. Perhaps too many conductors are scared to focus on really making the players play with good balance and style for fear of a bad contest result, as we all no loud, hard, fast and rank wins contests too often?
I have to say, I certainly have tried since I first came to Japan to try and address this by working a lot on phrasing and balance in rehearsals, but I fear that there`s no way we can reverse the trend of poor musicianship that has snuck into band playing. It`s a real shame because, although Japan is a "developing" brass band nation, ironically their bands play with a higher standard of musicianship than many of ours do now!!
Sorry for the rant, it`s been a real bee in my bonnet!