RobsHouse.net [Arichive] - Kimiko Ishizaka

Wildly popular on YouTube: Kimiko Ishizaka's "Goldberg Variations" and MuseScore

Robert Douglass — Mon, 25 May 2015 15:31:59 +0000

Two things to learn about the success of Kimiko Ishizaka's YouTube video "Goldberg Variations Complete (J.S. Bach BWV 988), with score, Kimiko Ishizaka piano":

People love using YouTube to listen to music. This can be seen in the video's analytics: while it accounts for 44% of the roughly 20,000 monthly views the channel gets, that number goes to 84% of the minutes watched. People watch 125,000 minutes of the video each month - that's 86 days and 21 hours of viewing, every month!
Both the length and the video score are attractive features. Surfing YouTube is hard work. Why not sit and watch something entertaining and educational for an hour or more? Plus, the appeal is broad. People who know the Goldbergs can simply listen, maybe with the video on in the background. People studying piano, or trying to get a visual sense for how the music is put together can see then notes going by, clearly marked in realtime on the MuseScore.

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Music

Kimiko Ishizaka

Gramophone Magazine Reviews: The Well-Tempered Clavier by Kimiko Ishizaka

Robert Douglass — Sun, 24 May 2015 18:17:21 +0000

The June 2015 issue of Gramophone Magazine features an interview with Kimiko Ishizaka, and a review of her March 2015 release of J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1. Apparently it is only available to readers in the USA and Canada. Why Gramophone made this decision is anyone's guess; perhaps because the label, Navona Recordings, is located in the USA?

The interview goes straight for the juicy details, such as Kimiko's history as a competitive athlete, the fact that the album was backed financially by over 1,000 fans, and that she practises in the complete darkness.

The review, however, focuses on the music. Let me share some of the quotes:

Ishizaka plays the 24 preludes and fugues with impeccable taste and technique, finding many levels of musical meaning even as she brings utmost clarity to the multiplicity of textures.
...
She scales her Bach to the rhythmic, structural and sonic needs of the music, without touching the sustaining pedal. Her articulation runs the sensitive gamut from cushioned to bitingly crisp.
...
It is the fugues where Ishizaka goes furthers in demonstrating how intimate she has become with Bach. Each line has a transparent place in the scheme of unfolding things, and the pianist seems to take enormous pleasure in weaving together all of the miraculous strands.
...
Ishizaka plays these compact monuments with intense and shapely finesse. Playing in darkness has led her to illuminating views of Bach.

You can read the whole interview and review online.

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Music

Kimiko Ishizaka

The Open Well-Tempered Clavier is here

Robert Douglass — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 01:19:47 +0000

For several years, the recording I wanted to hear the most was Kimiko Ishizaka's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1. Now, after several world tours, a successful Kickstarter campaign, and an enormous amount of hard work and perseverance, it is here. You can download and enjoy this public domain creation, and share it with the people you love. I hope that you will find joy in the music, as I have.

Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 by Kimiko Ishizaka

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Kimiko Ishizaka

Well-Tempered Clavier

Kimiko Ishizaka plays Bach at the Manifold Recording Studio

robertDouglass — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 13:17:44 +0000

1. 0:28 Prelude in C-Major BWV 846
2. 2:47 Fugue in C-Major BWV 846
3. 4:38 Prelude in C-Minor BWV 847
4. 6:30 Fugue in C-Minor BWV 847
5. 8:24 Prelude in C#-Major BWV 848
6. 9:37 Fugue in C#-Major BWV 848
7. 12:06 Prelude in C#-Minor BWV 849
8. 15:04 Fugue in C#-Minor BWV 849
9. 17:42 Prelude in D-Major BWV 850
10. 19:16 Fugue in D-Major BWV 850
11. 20:59 Prelude in D-Minor BWV 851
12. 22:34 Fugue in D-Minor BWV 851
13. 24:40 Prelude in Eb-Major BWV 852
14. 28:00 Fugue in Eb-Major BWV 852
15. 29:48 Prelude in Eb-Minor BWV 853
16. 33:47 Fugue in D#-Minor BWV 853
17. 37:33 Prelude in E-Major BWV 854
18. 39:04 Fugue in E-Major BWV 854
19. 40:23 Prelude in E-Minor BWV 855
20. 42:29 Fugue in E-Minor BWV 855
21. 44:02 Prelude in F-Major BWV 856
22. 45:04 Fugue in F-Major BWV 856
23. 46:28 Prelude in F-Minor BWV 857
24. 49:20 Fugue in F-Minor BWV 857
Encore:
26. 54:34 Fugue in F#-Major BWV 858

UPDATE: The new Well-Tempered Clavier website is online, and in March 2015, that is where you will find Kimiko's recording of the entire Book One, made in the Teldex Studio, Berlin.

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Kimiko Ishizaka

Music

J.S. Bach

Last weekend I took Kimiko Ishizaka to the greatest geek event I've ever been to

robertDouglass — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 20:29:21 +0000

Observe. Hack. Make. That was the name of the event that drew over 3,000 people to a pasture in northern Holland last week. Every attendee is considered a volunteer, and the atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration is palpable and refreshing. So was the utter concern with the state of privacy, freedom of speech, human rights, and the future of the internet. The conference started off with an address - delivered remotely - by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and it just got better after that. Here's a selection of some of my favorite titles. I wish I could have attended them all:

Lockpicking, a primer
Introducing Biohacking
How To Build A Trading Robot With Open Source Tools
How to legalize drugs using only 13 years and 10 million US$
Molecular cooking
3D printing and Metal Casting
Drupal Commerce and the Bachkoor Holland
Finance and The Future Beyond Bitcoin
Reports from the Frontlines: The Digital War on Civil Society
Tempo/Rhythm Detection and Musical Nearest Neighbors
9 Billion People: an engineering consideration of climate, poverty and justice
Open Source Food
Modeling and Control of Rotary Winged Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
New Human Interfaces for Music
Decoding memory dumps of mobile phones and navigation systems (workshop)

After four full days of such programming, the attendees were ready for some pure geek entertainment, and that's where Kimiko Ishizaka, the Open Goldberg Pianist, came in. The organizers had carefully planned the final concert in the main tent, including having a forklift ready to haul a concert grand piano from the nearest road to the main tent in tent in the middle of the field (imagine a space the size of a small city filled with tents - big ones for the events and individual tents for the people who camped out for four days to attend). With a full crew of volunteer camera, light, and audio technicians on hand, Kimiko played over an hour of Bach and Chopin for nearly 2,000 very enthusiastic hackers. The mood in the tent was electric, with everyone paying rapt attention to the performance, and encouraging Kimiko with multiple standing ovations and hearty cheering. In the video of the performance you can start to hear the shapes and lines of Kimiko's Well-Tempered Clavier, and sense what a fantastic recording of the piece she's going make in 2014. You also get to hear her first ever performance of all 12 Chopin Études op. 10. One particularly magical moment happened when Kimiko finishes the last Bach piece, the Fugue in Eb Minor, and goes straight into a Chopin Prelude, also in Eb Minor. She planned this transition, purposely grouping them together, and the effect is striking.

OHM2013 also coincided with the announcement of Kimiko's "Twelve Tones of Bach" tour, and her ongoing Kickstarter campaign to support the tour. The recording was done under a Creative Commons license in the spirit of Open Source Bach. Many many thanks to Hans de Raad, Paul Krischer, Walter van Holst, Nancy Beers, Etienne Heemskerk, and the many others who made this event possible.

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2,000 people @ohm2013 totally silenced by Kimiko Ishizaka playing Bach and Chopin. Beautiful festival, great people. pic.twitter.com/Pfxij6r2Wy

— Silkie Carlo (@silkiecarlo) August 3, 2013

#ohm2013 closing ceremony: 1536 geeks, Kimiko Ishizaka and her grand piano pic.twitter.com/vPU6SqRRQY

— Joakim Lundborg (@joakimlundborg) August 3, 2013

Kimiko Ishizaka's live concert at #OHM2013, excellent performance, standing ovation. Bach & Chopin. @KimikoIshizaka pic.twitter.com/liKUXibzA0

— Aschwin Marsman (@aschwinmarsman) August 3, 2013

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Kimiko Ishizaka

Music

Bringing Bach to DrupalCon and beyond

robertDouglass — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 23:38:34 +0000

Open Source Bach. It was an idea so simple yet completely audacious that it made the front pages of BoingBoing and Slashdot, was written about in Wired, The New Yorker, F.A.Z., Spiegel, La Stampa, and brought together a diverse team that included a publisher, a piano manufacturer, and a notation software company. At the center of it all was pianist Kimiko Ishizaka, my wife and muse. Now, after 11 years of dreaming about it, I'm bringing Kimiko to DrupalCon to perform for you, the Drupal community.

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The session is one of 12 lecture/concerts, representative of the 12 keys of the piano, that we're performing from September to November this year. In order to take open source music to the next level, we're travelling around the world, reaching out to diverse audiences, and explaining why electronic scores and high-quality public domain recordings are worth investing in. Each of the events will have a different focus, a different audience, and will be broadcast to the world via Google Hangouts On Air, Studio Mode (which sounds awesome!)

Prague isn't the only Drupal related stop on the tour. On October 16 we'll be travelling to Hamburg to perform from the offices of Comm-Press, home of the pianist and music aficionado Ralf Hendel. Open Source will also be a focal point when we perform in the Manifold Recording Studio in Pittsboro, North Carolina. The studio was built by Michael Tiemann, author of the G++ compiler and Vice President of Open Source Affairs at RedHat.

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In order to come to DrupalCon, and to perform at Comm-Press and the other locations, we're running a Kickstarter campaign. One of the interesting creations that came about as a result of last year's project is a set of 32 fractal animation videos made by a Swiss artist called Landscape Windscreen. These computer generated fly-throughs of infinite fractal worlds is tranquil, mesmerising, and utterly beautiful. Each video is set to one of the tracks of the Open Goldberg Variations, and the inspiration clearly came from "Open Source Bach". We're offering this new video as an HD download or as a DVD. We're also offering Supporter level tickets to many of the concerts, the opportunity to join Kimiko Ishizaka for dinner afterwards, as well as the opportunity for corporate sponsors to underwrite the whole tour with logos and messages on the programs, websites, and broadcasts.

A successful Kickstarter will help pay for expenses like the piano rental during DrupalCon, the travel to Prague and Hamburg, and Kimiko's O1 visa to perform in the USA. Whether you're attending DrupalCon Prague or not, you can help us in our quest to create open source music, and you can watch all 12 performances on the Google Hangouts, or view them later on YouTube. Thanks for your help!

PS - see if you can spot Richard Stallman in the Kickstarter video!

PSS - the photos are Kimiko playing at the OHM2013 festival, and the Manifold Recording Studio's music room.

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Kimiko's Goldberg Variations CD

robertDouglass — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 22:04:51 +0000

It's official - the Open Goldberg Variations Double CD, played by Kimiko Ishizaka, is available on Amazon. The final physical manifestation of this project has turned out beautifully, featuring many great photos of Kimiko, the dedications for all of the variations from the Kickstarter backers, and liner notes from both Andrew Melck and Kimiko herself. It looks quite nice on the CD rack and fits perfectly in those vintage machines that most of us still have lying around from the early days of digital music.

Buy one now, and you support Kimiko in her goal to record Bach's Well Tempered Clavier next. If you like it, give it a good review, and help others discover this music.

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Open Goldberg

Kimiko Ishizaka

Kimiko Ishizaka's World Tour, playing Bach's Well Tempered Clavier

robertDouglass — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 11:32:53 +0000

Kimiko Ishizaka is playing Bach's Well Tempered Clavier, Vol. 1, in 6 cities from now until January 2013. It's part of a larger project to record the whole WTC. This is a mammoth undertaking, and the results are going to be quite excellent. I'm organizing the entire tour.

Stops include: Cologne, Ann Arbor, New York, Rockport MA, Vienna, and London. There are also concerts in Düsseldorf and Toronto where parts of the Well Tempered Clavier will be played. The Toronto stop is exciting because both Kimiko and I have been invited to present at a massive 2-day event on the occasion of Glenn Gould's 80th birthday.

To help fund the tour we're selling pre-order tickets to the concerts, and a copy of the "Best of the Tour" digital recording, via Kickstarter. Please support Kimiko Ishizaka's tour!

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Kimiko Ishizaka

Kimiko at the German championships for weight lifting

robertDouglass — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:45:31 +0000

She placed 5th out of 9 in the up-to 63Kg weight class with a total of 130Kg in the two disciplines (55Kg snatch, 75Kg clean/jerk).

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Kimiko Ishizaka