I played the guitar at the event produced by the famous voice and stage actress, Chiaki Omigawa

For a while I upload only live event report and Sakura pictures. Very sorry.

I uploaded more pictures on Instagram so you can visit there just to see pictures.

On Nov 12th, 2017, I went to play the guitar for the live event called ‘Omigawa Chiaki’s Oyugi-Kai 2nd!’. The members are as same as before, 3 performers. Ms. Chiaki Omigawa (vocal and recitation), Ms. Aruhi (Ms. Ayaka Hara, piano) and me (acoustic guitar). The place is also as same as before, Crossing at Shin-Daida, Tokyo. The event consists of recitation, tea break, and singing part. In tea break, audience can order their drink to Chiaki directly and they say ‘Kami-Taio’ (means great service) about this very personal and special service by Chiaki. I joined just to the singing part and played the acoustic guitar as usual. This time the event was hold twice in a day, in the afternoon and in the evening. So live performance was done twice.

 

 

I don’t join to the recitation part but recitation was more excellent than the last time and it seemed not just a recitation but more like Chiaki’s solo theatrical recitation performance. And she brought out her ability fully enough as her origin was theatrical actress. Yes, average voice actors cannot perform like this such as using her body to express the story. Excellent, Chiaki. I expected audience must have had fulfilling time for her performance.

 

The story was based on ‘Chieko-Syo’ by Kotaro Takamura but Chiaki didn’t direct it with sweet story but wrote very dry transcript by herself. It revealed how Kotaro was a no-good husband and how Chieko was eccentric. So I enjoyed her recitation performance as one of audience and the performance was what adults can enjoy as a theatrical performance.

 

 

 

 

And after her high-quality finished recitation performance, under the name of ‘tea break’, she started ‘Kami-Taio’ only available on this event. Every time I’m impressed with this ‘tea break’ service by Chiaki. This satisfies both of shop and customers very much. Usually voice actresses give just greetings before and after the show. (Chiaki gave her greeting after finishing the event. I’m blown away.)

And finally I went to the stage. As Chiaki’s blog wrote, this time 5 songs I performed with Chiaki and Aruhi.

Every time this event makes me crazy because I have not been playing in live for very long time and on this event I need to play the acoustic guitar which is relatively difficult for me without click. And the performance is a duo style with piano. Solo accompaniment is much easier than duo because even if I make some mistakes, still playing confidently, almost people is not aware of my mistake. But if I make some mistakes on duo accompaniment all people can be aware. Especially like Oyugi-Kai event, when almost songs are quiet, much easier to be aware. So I need to confirm all chords, sequence, direction and so on with another player and need to avoid to play wrong chords.

 

This may be natural for you to play like this, right? But usually I play just my songs with music instruments so it’s difficult to memorize songs written by other persons. Also I need to track scores (Actually score involves just chord score and Tutti and break part). On my photos on this event always I’m watching scores so seriously and this is the reason.

In addition, as Aruhi changes her play such as tempo, dynamics and play style according to the change of atmosphere at the venue or to the change of Chiaki’s song style (As a live musician this is absolutely correct), I try to align with this. This causes a positive sense of tension and it’s the fun of live performance. I would like to say ‘Yeah, live performance should be like this. I like it.’

 

Well, here I would like to mention about music instruments used in the event. For Satomi Arai’s event, I used Guild D-35 as an acoustic guitar but for Chiaki’s event, I continue to use Martin D-35. I comprehensively chose this acoustic guitar based on the analysis of Chiaki’s voice quality, tune of songs and because this is the duo accompaniment. In live performance, acoustic guitar has volume issue, I use hybrid mic called Rare Earth made by Fishiman and the signal is outputted to the live monitor speakers.

On the other hand, Stage piano at the venue connected with my MacBook Pro 2016 via RME Fireface UCX and the piano sound came from MacBook Pro. The piano virtual instrument is very popular, Synthogy IvoryII with German Bösendorfer 290 Imperial Grand. Aruhi tried several pianos on IvoryII and she chose this for the event as the best. The sound of general stage piano is designed for popular music and the sound is too hard for classic music style performance like this event. So we replaced the piano sound.

So I may seem carelessly but I played 5 songs so seriously and finally the event was ended. This time I got relief from not so many MC like before. Thanks to all of performers, audience, PIC. Shall we have 3rd times???