My friend, Daijiro's "speech"

My buddy, Daijiro, went back to Japan after his short stay in Germany, studying with Roger Norrington. I was puzzled by his move. After many months, he finally gave me the reason why, and his words deeply touched me. And you asshole out there who think that we should all wear suits and night gowns into the concert hall! READ THIS!!


well this is why i came back to japan. i need to do this as soon as possible. otherwise, in 30 years, we are dead. I sound like making a speech below. well i intended to.

The environment where people get cultured



There is surprisingly a lot of concerts and exhibition in Europe.

There are concerts in numerous amounts of churches in a city every week, in music hall daily. Addition to it, there is operas. Beside, inexpensive tickets are always available.

This means that enjoying cultural events is normal act. And the environment for it is ready for people.

There are as many concerts in Europe as in Tokyo. However, the ticket price is much higher than it is in Europe. And the concerts take places in the same 4-5 concert halls which is located in City Center: therefore, it is quite far from the place where people live. The concerts begins early, therefore there is no time to have dinner before the concert. Hence audiences have to eat sandwich in the hall. This means that unless you have flexible schedule (who has it anyway in Tokyo?) and earn good, you cannot really enjoy concerts COMFOTABLY in Tokyo. In other words, most of people have to make effort or sacrifice in order to go to live performance. And top to all, Kids are not welcomed here.

When children grow up n this situation, they understand that going to concert is something special, something tiresome. They think participating cultural events, which enrich their life, is actually unproductive and waste. But they are the future audience. Is this OK? Off course not. Then, what should we do?　　　　　　

Children must attend cultural events as frequently as possible with their parents and enjoy. For this, creating such an environment is crucial, otherwise, we cannot hope for future.

The success of the Festival La Folle Journee in Japan is suggestive. The success is largely depends on its inexpensive ticket and flexible schedule. People are eager to engage themselves to these concerts if they do not have any stress both financially and time wise.

Unfortunate thing is audience for the festival does not listen to Classical music in normal situation. It means, there is no increasing in the amount of audience in professional music organization such as orchestras in Tokyo.

A big event does not help Classical world to have more audience. A fashion of listening to classical music does not help increasing audience. Because it is the big event, people come. Because it is cool only RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT, people listen. These things would not educate our future audience. NEVER!

Then what do we need? As I mentioned above, we musicians must frequently provide concerts which people can come without stress with their kids. In churches, public governed halls and Buddha temple and etc. If children grow up in this environment where they taste arts as daily food, they will be willing to go to those big halls where 100 people is playing together (this is really something abnormal you know that!), and therefore they understand that the ticket has to be expensive.

So please we have to spend our time and energy to create this environment. I hope you agree with me and do something together.


and this is my response to him:

Dude, well said! I have a lot of same thinking as u. Same thing happens in Malaysia --- well, even worse, because our level is not as high as Japan!

Going to see Malaysian Philharmonic is like going to a temple or shrine to worship the gods. And the stupid hall asks people to wear suit and night gowns to attend those concerts, otherwise they won't be allowed into the hall. Now what does that mean??? It ended up that most of the people attending are either hardcore music lovers who can afford to spend or yuppies who think going to concerts make them look cool and cultured, yet they don't know a thing.

I really hate this. I hate it from my guts. That's why I want to go home too. But not yet, not until I do something good here until people will believe what I say.

I wish you all the success u will get in the future! And please, if you can find sponsors to get me to Japan, let's play again!

Good luck my brother!