Azur Indian Music Project

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San Jose, San Jose, Costa Rica
Welcome to our music for development space where we will try to keep our friends updated on Azur Indian's latests. We also hope to engage actively with other musicians and anyone who is interested in development issues in general to hopefully reach higher grounds. So please, post your comments and share your thoughts with us! Azur Indian(アズール・インディアン)のブログへようこそ!このページでは私たちの活動をご紹介していくほか、音楽に興味がある方、国際協力・開発に興味がある方との交流の場を作っていければと考えています。みなさんの思いやコメントをこの場でぜひ共有してください!

Monday 31 January 2011

New composition for the school project 18 November 2010

I worked on this composition as a part of my class project, "Costa Rica Landslide Awarenss Project" and it was the first time make a serious composition after almost 20 years (if I remember correctly)! .

To explain a bit about the background why the idea of composition popped up, there was a severe landslide occured in Escazu, Costa Rica (near its capital San Jose) in early November and that killed 28 people, 4,900 people were displaced.

The class decided to cover this natural disaster with the means of media, since we major in Media and Conflict Studies. We already have quite a few people in our class who used to work as a journalists, and they all showed their professionalism which really impressed me. That made me think that I also would like to contribute this project with my profession.

This is the consequesnce of our class project on the "Costa Rica Landslide Awareness Project", please have a look! You can find various interesting perspectives through reading them.

Regarding the music composition, the main aim I put was to connect our class project with the local Costa Rican people.

First of all, I needed to feel this tragedy with my heart not my head. Ingmar and Tatiana's pictures helped me to know what really happened to people in Ezucas, and feel how people are suffering from it.  

Then, I extracted some of the essence of the world music that I asked the classmates to send me in advance and synthesise these elements to the basic melody that came from my impression when looking at the pictures. 

Therefore, you may find some parts of the melody sounds like ethnical music with "the 4th and 7th lacking scale" from Icelandic music, "glissando" from French traditionl music, and "tremolo" from Pakistani traditional music. It was also advantage for the cello to play "glissando" and "tremolo" because the cello as an instrument is good at describing these technics. This composition was composed for cello and piano duet, needless to say.


Let me also note technical aspects.
The composition was set as h-moll (B minor). Firstly, 4 bars of motive (A) that came from the impression from the pictures was made, and it was expanded to another 4 bars (A'). Then, in order to transit the tune to D-dur (D major), 7th code was implemented (in this case, it was A7).  2 motives of 4 bars in D-dur were followed (B and B'), and it transitted back to the initial tune: h-moll (A'').

The second part was made for piano, and the cello which played main melody for the first part now becomes the accompaniment for the piano's main melody. Starting with h-moll, it transitted to g-moll. After all, it came back to initial h-moll as the third part of the composition, and had 2 motives of 4 bars (A''' and A''''), it ended with the picardy terminate in order to show the hope at the end.

The flow of the tune was
h-moll (B minor) --> D-dur (D major) -->h-moll (B minor) -->g-moll (G minor) --> h-moll (B minor) --> H-dur (B major)

The flow of the code was
Bm-->A-->Fsharpm7-->Bm-->Bm-->A-->Fsharpm7-->Bm
Bm-->A-->Fsharpm7-->Bm-->Bm-->A-->Fsharpm7-->Bm
A-->D-->A-->A-->D-->D-->A-->Fsharpm7-->Bm
Bm-->A-->Fsharpm7-->Bm-->Bm-->A-->Fsharpm7-->Bm
Bm-->Em-->Fsharp-->Bm-->Fsharp7-->Gm-->Cm-->Dm-->Gm-->Dm-->Gm-->Dm
Gm-->Gm-->Cm-->Gm-->Gm-->Cm-->D7-->Gm-->Cm-->Gm-->Cm-->D-->D7-->Gm-->
Gm-->Gm-->Cm-->Gm-->Gm-->Cm-->D7-->Gm-->Cm-->Gm-->Bflat-->Emdim7
D-->Eflat-->F-->Fsharp7
Bm-->A-->Fm7-->Bm-->Bm-->A-->Fm7-->Bm-->B


30th Anniversary for University for Peace: 10th December 2010

We were given a chance to play for the 30th Anniversary for University for Peace. This ceremony was particularly dedicated to the school founder: Rodrigo Carazo Odio, who was a former Costa Rican president from 1978 to 1982. He passed away in 2009. (cf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigo_Carazo_Odio)










We were asked to play Latin American music, so what we opted were:
-Libertabgo (Astor Piazzola) 
-Luna Liberiana (Jesus Bomilla) 

As for Libertango, needless to say, Astor Piazzola is famous for Tango composer from Argentine.

Luna Liberiana was composed by a Costa Rican composer called "Jesus Bomilla", and what a coincidence, 2010 was the 75th anniversary after it was composed.

Someone at the ceremony told me that "Luna Liberiana" is in the heart of Costa Rican people with the memories of summer time when they were young.

It was warm moment that guests for the ceremony joined us to sing when we started playing it, seemed like people were remembering their past times.

Entry:Midori

Azur Indian's new project for an duo concert: 1st and 3rd December 2010

Midori accompanied four cello students, one violin student and one sax student on her piano on the 1st and 3rd December.

This was the second occasion to implement the new project: supporting music students for their performance.

This concert was performed by outstanding students from Casa de la cultura in Ciudad Colon, and it functions as one of few occasions for students to perform their music ability in public. I was inspired by the students, everyone played very well with the intense concentration, Good job, guys!

If you are looking for more hands for your performance, or need an accompaniment for your performance, please contact us at: azur.indian@gmail.com

We support you with
-Cello
-Violin
-Piano
-Vocal





Azur Indian's new project in an orchestra concert: 28th November 2010

Supporting music students for their performance at the stage has just been installed as one of Azur Indian's projects, and the concert on the 28th November was the first occasion to put this into practice.

This new project aims supporting youth's performance when they need more hands for their play at the stage.

We provide violin, cello, vocal and piano for this project. It can be used for the help for an orchestra when you simply need more people in your group, piano accompaniment for chamber music when you cannot find a piano accompanist, or vocal support for choir when you need more vocal volume.

The concert on the 28th November was organised by El Centro Cantonal de Cultura de Mora (Mora Cantonal Centre of Culture and there were two youth orchestras playing in this concert. One was Youth Orchestra of Guayabo de Mora, and the other one was Youth Orchestra of Mora Cantonal Centre of Culture.



(Today's programme)

Midori supported the youth orchestra of Mora Cantonal Centre of Culture with the violin as Azur Indian's new project. It was conducted by Sergio Nunes, the directer of Casa de la Cultura of Ciudad Colon, and we played:

1. Theme from the New World (A. Dvorak)
2. Let it be (J. Lennon)
3. Sonidos del Selencio (P. Simon)
4. Popurri brasileno (A. Barraso)



Entry:Midori