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Kitaro
Composer Kitaro, with a Golden Globe Award, Grammy nomination, and two dozen albums to his credit, is revered most for his ability to embody the human spirit in his music. Although he's been categorized in the New Age genre, Kitaro prefers to call his music simply "spiritual," distinguished by its warmth and emotion as opposed to the New Age emphasis on digital technique over humanness. "Feeling," he says, "is the most important element in my music." This is evident on the current album, Kitaro - An Enchanted Evening, a live album of his most recent U.S. Tour. Featuring music from his last studio album, Mandala, his Golden Globe Award-winning original score for Oliver Stone's film, Heaven and Earth, and other earlier work. Although Kitaro has lived in the U.S. for the past five years on a 180-acre spread outside Boulder, Colorado, he realizes the importance of not straying too far musically from his Japanese origins. Each year the musician returns to the foot of Mount Fuji to perform the ritual drum ceremony he instituted in 1983 in which, from sunrise to sunset, he beats towering Taiko drums so passionately that his hands often bleed. Inspired by the majestic mountain views outside his 2500-square-foot home studio, on which he's putting the finishing touches ("It's large enough to hold a 70-piece orchestra--big enouch for me!" he chuckles), Kitaro currently has a number of new projects on the drawing board. He's working a Chinese film soundtrack, making a CD-ROM on native Japanese dance, and readying a one hour PBS special. Kitaro is perhaps most enthusiastic about bringing authentic native music into the mainstream. He's produced albums by band members Nawang Khechog, a Tibetan monk flute player [currently available], and Yu-Xiao Guang, who plays a Chinese fiddle called the huquin on Domo Records. "But my ultimate goal," concludes Kitaro, "is to keep expressing my feelings in music and for people to enjoy it." December, 1997 |
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