Shunji Iwai is known as a new "image writer" with potential in Japan, and his debut novel "Love Letter" has touched a generation and become a representative of New Japanese Cinema. Natsume says that the Japanese use "the moon is beautiful tonight" to express romance, and this time, Iwai Jun and his band came to Shanghai to show the most delicate side of Japanese romance in the form of an orchestra.
For Shunji Iwai, it is not the first time that he has come to China to hold a concert. As early as 2011, he came to China with singer Yui Makino and held the "Shunji Iwai Film Concert". He took that opportunity to form a band. In Hec & Pascal, Pascal mainly refers to Jun Iwai himself, while Hec is a combination of two girls, Shiina Keito and Kuwabara Makoto. Among them, Shiina Keito, who is a dual actor and singer-songwriter, serves as the lead singer, and Makoto Kuwahara, who combines composing, arranging, and playing the piano, plays the piano and composes. In addition, the band has three members: Momoko Arai as a violinist, and Shunpei Hayashida and Yosuke Miyauchi take on the roles of cellist and guitarist.
When it comes to Shunji Iwai's film score, there is a very prominent feature that the music fits with the movie scene, and it can be said that the music is completely tailored for the movie scene. Most of the soundtracks of these films are mainly piano-based, and the clever use of strings has a touching effect, telling you and me into the mood that Shunji Iwai wants to tell us.
Shunji Iwai has been particularly fascinated by the sound of the piano since he was a child, but it was not until he went to college that he really touched the piano, and he often sneaked in to play it twice when the piano room was empty, and the only piano education he received during his student years was scale practice. But it is this simple scale that subtly achieves his subsequent film aesthetics, "to make a picture that flows like music".
As for his musical talent, Iwai Shunji does not deny it, and he does not even know how this all happened. "Listening to the soundtrack of films like Flowers and Alice now, I don't know how to do it at the time, but maybe making movies and paintings gives me the skills to express the impressions in my head in a form that I can record when the music comes out."
The Shanghai concert begins with the soundtrack of the film April Story of the same name. It's a prose-style film, accompanied by the soft sound of the piano, reminiscent of scenes from the film: in early spring and April, cherry blossoms drift down the streets, and bicycles squeak across the road. The piano is constantly repeated, the small variations are progressive, and the rhythm of the waltz is calm and pleasant.
The piano is Shunji Iwai's most commonly used means of scoring. From "Love Letters" to "April Story" to "Flowers and Alice", the piano plays a very important role. In the movie "All About Lily Week", Debussy's piano song "Moonlight" has become an important symbol of the whole movie.
The soundtrack of the entire film switches back and forth between Debussy's piano and Lily Chow's voice, and at the end of the film, the girl who quietly plays Debussy is the warmest scene. Compared with Debussy's dreamy music, "Wings That Can't Fly" shows more of the real and cruel side of youth.
In Shunji Iwai's famous work "Love Letter", the background music with the piano as the main play has a warm color, not hurried, and mixed with a faint sadness in the piano sound with emotional pulse, with the narrative of the whole movie, the plot is told. The film 'Winter Story' and 'Little Happiness' can be said to be the two most popular soundtracks, but anyone who has seen this movie, as soon as they hear the melody of "Winter Story", can't help but think of the snow in Hokkaido, the warm sun in winter, the borrowing card and the white curtains, while in "Little Happiness", the crisp piano sound sounds, accompanied by the appearance of two sketches, telling the girl Fujii Tree has not been aware of the crush of her youth.
In these film scores, the soundtrack of "Swallowtail Butterfly" can be described as an outlier. The soundtrack of the film was composed by Japanese musician Takeshi Kobayashi, and compared to the fresh beauty of the soundtrack of several other films, its theme music is grand, jazz, rock, soul and symphony are mixed together, high-pitched but full of vitality. The mixed style is exactly what the film wants to express: although reality is painful, we still have hope.
For Shunji Iwai, youth is a mood, a state, regardless of age. He collects, creates, dreams, and writes a story of youth.
"Transparent HumanIty" Shunji Iwai and the band perform the film music
Time: 19:30, 6 July 2016
Venue: Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall Main Hall
Band Leader: Shunji Iwai / Violin: Momoko Arai / Vocals: Shikina Gino
Piano: Makoto Kuwahara / Guitar: Yosuke Miyauchi / Cello: Shunpei Hayashida