Alvear plays Sugimoto; Sugimoto plays Duplant

Wednesday 28 March 2018

I went a Taku Sugimoto gig in a community centre in Footscray about fifteen years ago and he didn’t do shit. For an hour or so he sat there, guitar on his lap, adjusting the volume knob on his amplifier once or twice. We were all partly listening, partly waiting, straining to hear if there would be anything to hear. We watched to see if anything was happening that we hadn’t heard and so we listened to hear if anything was happening that we didn’t see*. He’s playing tonight with the singer Minami Saeki at a club a few blocks away from me but I’m not going, mostly because it’s miserable out and I’m a bit hungover and will be impatient and inattentive. He’s playing in Sheffield tomorrow night and you should probably go.

Instead, I have been listening to two new recordings of him playing. On one, he plays Bruno Duplant’s composition lEttEr to tAku. On the other, he is joined by Cristián Alvear for a guitar duet composed by Sugimoto. On paper, both pieces may well look much the same: single notes, scattered here and there. For lEttEr to tAku, recorded in a Park in Tokyo last year, Sugimoto is credited with “guitar, small amplifier, bow, park”. Guitar notes are played and heard, in what would be a splendid isolation from each other. As at that Footscray gig, there is an attentiveness, a precision in how he plays and in how he doesn’t play. Is he responding to the sounds in his environment? Duplant says “Taku played a lot with them while respecting the score” (emphasis mine). It seems that the piece is a field recording, with the sounds of the park and the surrounding city taking up most of the attention. Yet the guitar is always present, as much in its anticipation as its sound. The guitar sounds themselves are gentle, but pure and clear against the indeterminate tapestry of sounds. The guitar defines the context, allowing the city to become a musical accompaniment, but also acts as a frame, elevating the background noise to the foreground of attention. It’s like an aural work of urban environmental art, a small intervention that transforms the substance of a piece of everyday life.

Sugimoto’s guitar duet, simply titled h, is closely related to his songs with Minami Saeki which I’m not hearing tonight. h was also recorded in Tokyo last year, but indoors, at a concert. The piece is essentially one of Sugimoto’s songs, with the voice part transcribed for guitar. He and Cristián Alvear each play slow, wandering melodies that weave an irregular counterpoint between the two instruments. (Alvear’s playing has that same quiet, imperturbable patience as Sugimoto, as heard on his recordings of Sarah Hennies and d’incise.) The voice part plays in harmonics, against the more fully sounded notes of the other guitar. Both parts have sufficient lightness as to almost merge and colour each other at times. When the two overlap, tiny differences in intonation emerge (the guitar’s frets enforce a type of equal temperament, at odds with the harmonic overtones). Halfway through it feels like it’s about to outstay its welcome but it never does. The colouration, unpredicatble melody and irregular exchanges and overlappings between the two instruments holds a sort of quiet fascination.

* This is another example of seeing and hearing music.