Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto - Insen Tour Part 4

Third Insen Tour - Tokyo Concert

I asked two friends of mine who live in Tokyo if they would like to be put on the guest list for one of the three Insen concerts. In return they asked me to visit them, so I flew to Tokyo together with Julia for the first time for one week.

This was a very nice trip. All the japanese people we met were extremely nice and attentive. In the subway you are not allowed to talk on the mobile phone and if people have a cold they wear respiratory protection masks in order not to infect others.

The Insen Concert took place at the C. C. Lemon Hall (formerly Shibuya Kokaido) in Shibuya. The name comes from a popular japanese softdrink. It started on sunday at 3 pm, which is a very unusual time for a concert, also in Japan. The nearly 2200 seats were all sold out. We had seats on the far right near the loudspeakers.

The concert was very nice. The audience was a bit stiff in the beginning, which seems to be typical for a japanese audience, but after some tracks they started clapping after each piece and in the end, after encoring with three more tracks, they were overwhelmed.

Of course I’m always concentrated on the visuals. For the whole third tour Forma rented Barco LEDs, which had a higher resolution than the lighthouse systems on the first tour. They looked so much better overall, but as mentioned somewhere before, the visuals weren’t fine adjusted to the LEDs which was kind of sad. I still held my breath during the concert hoping that the Mac G5 or the Jitter Patch didn’t crash. And i almost can’t believe that this didn’t happen once in approximately 40 concerts. We didn’t have a fallback system!

And now, after many attempts, even the Forma website lists my name in the credits. Still the wording is misleading: “An on-stage video installation by the artist, in collaboration with visual software designer Karl Kliem, will create a distinctive stage set featuring dynamic, real-time visualisation of the sound as graphics”. This conveys the impression that the visuals were done by Carsten, while his actual part was the stage design and the idea of the shape of the LED wall as a bridge between Ryuichi Sakamoto and him.

Tour Dates of the third Insen Tour

Date: 12, 13 and 14 Oct 06
Time: 20:00 (Thurs 12 Oct and Fri 13 Oct) and 13:00 (Sat 14 Oct)
Festival: Melbourne International Arts Festival
Venue: The Arts Centre, Hamer Hall, 100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, AU
Tickets: AU$71.50, AU$55.00, AU$49.50, AU$44.00, AU$33.00, AU$30.00, AU$23.10
Tel: 61 3 9256 8800
Web: www.melbournefestival.com.au

Date: 18 Oct 06
Time: 20:00
Festival: Macau International Music Festival
Venue: Mount Fortress, Macau, MO
Tickets: Free
Web: www3.icm.gov.mo

Date: 22 Oct 06
Venue: Yamaguchi Center for Arts & Media, 7-7 Nakazono-cho, Yamaguchi, JP
Tel: 81 83 901 2222
Email: information@ycam.jp
Web: www.ycam.jp

Date: 24 & 25 Oct 06
Time: 18:30
Venue: Geijutsu Hall, 1-14-15 Shimmachi, Nishi-ku, Osaka, JP
Tickets: JPY 7350
Tel: 81 6 6233 8888 Chris Godet

Date: 28 & 29 Oct 06
Time: 18:00 (Sat 28 Oct) and 14:30 (Sun 29 Oct)
Venue: Shibuya Ko-Kai-Do, 1-1, Udagawa-cho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, JP
Tickets: JPY 7350
Tel: 81 3 5436 9600

Date: 31 Oct 06
Time: 18.30
Venue: Tokyo International Forum Hall C, 5-1 Marunouchi 3-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, JP
Tickets: JPY 7350
Tel: 81 3 5221 9000
Email: forumpr@t-i-forum.jp
Web: www.t-i-forum.jp

Date: 4 Nov 06 (Sat)
Time: 19:15
Festival: New Vision Arts Festival 2006
Venue: Hong Kong City Hall, Edinburgh Place, Central, HK
Tickets: HK$450, HK$350, HK$250, HK$150
Tel: 852 2370 1044
Email: fo@lcsd.gov.hk
Web: www.newvisionfestival.gov.hk

29 October 2006 | Concert | Comments