CD
hitorri-976
Limited edition of 150
Out on April 11, 2021
Ftarri Bandcamp
Michiko Ogawa: Hammond organ (Hammond T200 Leslie)
Recorded at home in Wedding, Berlin, May 15 (1) and 31 (2, 3), 2020
Recorded and mixed by Michiko Ogawa
Mastered by Joe Talia
Artwork and design by Cathy Fishman
Liner notes (English and Japanese) by Michiko Ogawa
Our apartment is located on the ground floor of a four-story building in northwestern Berlin. An old dusty Hammond organ from the seventies sits in the relatively wide hallway that stretches from the front door. It had been long abandoned at some gravestone shop in the city. My husband got it at a bargain and it was in need of repair. But somehow I felt a strange attachment to the giant electronic instrument that managed to keep its original function while making gurgling noises. In the midst of the May 2020 global pandemic lockdown, my husband and I took turns taking our two-year-old daughter out for a walk. That left us with two hours of free time each per day. This music was created alone in these strange days of the same thing over and over again with no end in sight. I recorded "omote" from the built-in Leslie speaker, and "ura" and "takai" with a line connection. (Michiko Ogawa)
Born in Tokyo, clarinetist Michiko Ogawa has studied clarinet performance and musicology at universities and graduate schools in Japan, Germany and the U.S. She earned a bachelor's and a graduate degree from Toho Gakuen School of Music and a master's degree from the Musikhochschule Freiburg, studied with composer Jo Kondo at Ochanomizu University, and received a doctorate in contemporary music performance from the University of California (San Diego). Ogawa has appeared in many festivals inside and outside Japan including Tokyo Experimental Festival (2013), Supersense Festival of Ecstatic Music (Melbourne, 2015), the Monday Evening Concert series (Los Angeles, 2016), BIFEM (Bendigo, Australia, 2016, 2017, 2019), Brisbane International Film Festival (Brisbane, 2018), and Maerzmusik (Berlin, Germany, 2018, 2019). In 2019 she performed at Ftarri Festival along with Klaus Lang (harmonium), Johnny Chang (violin), and Samuel Dunscombe (bass clarinet). She currently lives in Berlin, where she is active on the contemporary music and experimental/improvised music scene.
This solo album contains a solo performance by Ogawa--not on the clarinet, but on a Hammond organ. The dust-covered, long-abandoned organ from the 1970s had been purchased at a bargain price. At her home in Berlin in May 2020, during the coronavirus lockdown, Ogawa recorded three pieces (18, 28 and 23 minutes long) that she'd created alone during these strange times. The Hammond organ's distinctive warm, deep and mellow timbres multiply and overlap, continuing without pause along with changes in pitch and subtle sound vibrations.
