1 	The Heavenly Spheres Are Illuminated By Lights		11:45

Lise Messier – soprano
Margaret Leng Tan - piano 
Michael Pugliese -   Percussion 

2 	Birds In Warped Time II		11:03

Frank Almond - Violin 
Margaret Leng Tan – piano

3 	Incarnation II 	18:15

Margaret Leng Tan - piano with digital delay

4 	A Gate Into The Stars 	8:13

Margaret Leng Tan – solo piano 

5 	Litania 	13:06

Margaret Leng Tan – two pianos with digital delay	

The music of Satoh is atmospheric and easy-listening. It is tonal, often sweet and at times saccharine even, and based on simple harmonies and harmonic progressions. The liner notes (by pianist Margaret Leng Tan herself) compare "The Heavenly Sphreres are Illuminated By Lights" (1979), with its wordless and sinuous melismatas, to the famous coloratura aria in Villa Lobos' 5th Bachianas Brasileira, and they are right: it is Villa Lobos in the New Age era. But, as simplistic and going-for-effect immediate effect as it does, it is, well, effective and does elicit a certain entrancement.

I liked very much the minimalism applied to folk music that pervades "Birds in Warped Time II" for Violin and Piano from 1980. You get again a long and sinuous melody on the fiddle, with many glissandos and wide vibrato, seeming straight out of some far away Japanese countryside, over a continuous, shimmering piano ostinato straight out of Glass or Ten Holt. But around the 5 minute mark the violin melody moves to more chromatic glissandos and somber moods very much evocative of Enescu's 3rd Violin and Piano Sonata or Impressions d'Enfance, I find. But it is the kind of piece whose atmosphere, I feel, would gain from being developed over the time span of an hour or more, in a Morton Feldman fashion. Here, its 11 minutes are almost too short.

In "Incarnation II" for Piano solo from 1982 and Litania for Two pianos from 1973 (both "with digital delay", whatever that - unexplained by the liner notes - may be), Satoh appears as an heir to Cowell in such atmospheric pieces as the Three Irish Legends ("The Tides of Manaunaun", "The Hero Sun","Voice of Lear"). Although, unlike the American composer, Satoh is content to stick with the time-honored approach of striking the keys individually (rather than depressing them in clusters or directly strumming or plucking the strings), his music is, like Cowell's, motioned by a slow-moving ebb and flow of continuous sound evocative of the deep rumble of the universe. For "Incarnation", think of the opening of Rheingold for minimalist piano, and you won't be too far. "Litania" is even more impressive because it is constantly louder and angrier. It is the music Kubrik could have used in 2001 when astronaut David Bowman is hurled into the other dimension (but he used Ligeti's Lux Aeterna for that). It could be music to accompany the telluric upheavals that caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs (and Walt Disney used Stravinsky's Rite of Spring for that). Leng Tan maintains that the piece's "penchant for sonic violence" "invites comparisons to the Polish avant-garde composer Krzystof Pendrerecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima", and I agree, although Penderecki's harmonic progressions are more complex. In the fast vibrations of repeated notes, Ligeti's Continuum for harpsichord also came to mind. Anyway, these to pieces may not be extremely elaborate, but ultimately highly atmospheric and fascinating.

I have another version of Incarnation II by Joanna MacGregor (Play, see my review), although it is not entirely clear if it is the same. Leng Tan mentions that it "is presented here in an updated, extended performance of the original 1977 composition". It also here has a duration of 18:15 minutes, against 7 for Mac Gregor, although this may have to do with how many repeats of each section both pianists apply (hard to tell without a score and with music that "moves on" so slowly and imperceptibly). Interpretively, MacGregor is more powerful, but Leng Tan's vibration (the piece is a long tremolo with slow harmonic progressions) is faster. Both approaches work for me, but given the atmospheric nature of the piece, length and the sense of time slowly unfolding are a preferable option.

The contrast couldn't be greater with "A Gate into the Stars" for solo piano from 1982. Here, the textures are sparse, one note here, one note there, a simple, wistful melody, the kind of thing you'd think was improvised in the middle of the night in an silent Buddhist cloister (are there Buddhist cloisters ?). Music to put you gently to sleep, really. Play it to your babe and see if it works. Very pretty.

For the better or - and - the worse, it is the term "pretty" that most often came to my mind while listening to this disc - not with Litania, though. There, it was "impressive".

The liner notes claim that this New Albion release, from 1988, was the first recording in the West of the music of Somei Satoh. The artists participated in the premiere performances of Satoh's music in the US in 1984 and 1985. My only regret is that this is not the complete piano music of Satoh: the liner notes mention "Hymn for the Sun" (1973) and "Cosmic Womb" (1977) (the latter, Leng Tan plays on Margaret Leng Tan: Sonic Encounters: The New Piano - Works of John Cage / Alan Hovhaness / George Crumb / Somei Satoh / Ge Gan-Ru. The CD is 63 minutes long, which is more than acceptable, but more could have fit. --- Discophage, amazon.com

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1 	Kisetsu, for Orchestra (1999) 	16:09
2 	Kyokoku, for Baritone and Orchestra (2001)	21:21
3 	Violin Concerto (2002)	25:26

Baritone Vocals – Katsunori Kono (track 2)
Violin – Anne Akiko Meyers (track 3)
Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra
Conductor – Tetsuji Honna 

Sômei Satoh is often classified as an ambient composer because of his penchant for writing slow, meditative works that evoke the mystical timelessness of Asian sacred music. However, Satoh's tonal harmonies and unblurred orchestration follow western conventions, and his soft, static works are only superficially like ambient music, insofar as very little happens. The drawn-out chord progressions in Kisetsu resemble the uninteresting bits of late Romantic slow movements, patched together and stretched into an empty, featureless adagio. Whatever ambience one perceives is incidental, due merely to low audibility. In the same vein, Kyokoku is an elegiac work centered on baritone Katsunori Kono's slow, sonorous chant, but the brooding orchestral accompaniment consists of little more than predictable minor key progressions, ornamented with a few exotic bell sounds. The Violin Concerto opens with more activity and promises to bring some relief from the tedium of the previous pieces. Anne Akiko Meyers plays a violin part that occasionally stirs to life, but the bulk of the piece is ponderously inactive, and Meyers has few opportunities for virtuosic display -- an absurdity in a concerto and a complete denial of expectations. The Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, directed by Tetsuji Honna, is sufficiently involved in these live performances, and Camerata's recording is clean and resonant. --- Blair Sanderson, AllMusic Review

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1. Mantra
2. Stabat Mater

Jane Thorngren – Soprano
Somei Satoh - Composer, Electronics, Vocals
Pro Arte Chorale
George Manahan – Conductor

Starting with mere cricket whispers that crescendo to a glorified choir of Tibetan monks, the opening piece, "Mantra," is technically an electronic piece (utilizing a seemingly endless supply of Satoh's own voice) that is wholly organic in nature. The F note washes over the listener like a rich tide of drones that the composer builds on for 23 minutes, inducing a trance-like state. One item of note: this piece is featured twice as a theme to the original soundtrack of Ron Fricke's beautiful film Baraka (not to be missed), and it's deceptively simple structure coaxes the ear into a meditative state. What follows is a slightly more traditional composition, "Stabat Mater," a piece for choir that inches its way tensely through several movements, interjected by stabs of sound from versatile members of the "Pro Arte Chorale." A mostly quiet and beautiful trilogy in its own right, but less original than the first. If anything, one would hope for an extended rearrangement of "Mantra" for an independent and essential re-release, because it's that good by itself. --- Ken Tataki, Rovi

SOMEI SATOH was born in 1947 in Sendai (northern Honshu), Japan. He began his career in 1969 with "Tone Field," an experimental, mixed media group based in Tokyo. In 1972 he produced "Global Vision," a multimedia arts festival, that encompassed musical events, works by visual artists and improvisational performance groups. In one of his most interesting projects held at a hot springs resort in Tochigi Prefecture in 1981, Satoh places eight speakers approximately one kilometer apart on mountain tops overlooking a huge valley. As a man-made fog rose from below, the music from the speakers combined with laser beams and moved the clouds into various formations. Satoh has collaborated twice since 1985 with theater designer, Manuel Luetgenhorst in dramatic stagings of his music at The Arts at St. Ann's in Brooklyn, New York.

Satoh was awarded the Japan Arts Festival prize in 1980 and received a visiting artist grant from the Asian Cultural Council in 1983, enabling him to spend one year in the United States. He has written more than thirty compositions, including works for piano, orchestra, chamber music, choral and electronic music, theater pieces and music for traditional Japanese instruments. --- lovely.com

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1 	Litania (1973) 	13:17
2 	Mirror (1975) 	13:35
3 	Hymn For The Sun (1973) 	24:31

Somei Satoh - piano

This CD is markable reissue of very rare first LP of Somei Satoh. Like several other composers of his generation, Somei Satoh has an affinity for mysticism and meditation, and he attempts to convey stillness and timelessness in his extremely slow music. His works may be described as ambient, but their minor key harmonies and step-wise melodies seem more conventional than the blurred, unearthly sonorities usually found in that atmospheric genre. ALM Records issued some important LPs of Satoh's tape works in 70's - early 80's especially Mandala (1982) and Emerald Tablet(1981). Only Mandala is able to listen on CD now, but great work Emerald Tablet and Hymn For The Sun didn't reissue yet. You will re-discover Satoh's deep and divine world in this dense piano sound. Liner note is written by Yori-aki Matsudaira (Japanese and English). Contents: 'Litania' (1973) - for piano with delay system. 'Mirror' (1975) - for piano solo. 'Hymn For The Sun' (1973) - for piano with delay system.

Somei Satoh was born in 1947 in Sendai (northern Honshu), Japan. He began his career in 1969 with Tone Field, an experimental, mixed media group based in Tokyo. In 1972 he produced Global Vision, a multimedia arts festival, that encompassed musical events, works by visual artists and improvisational performance groups. In one of his most interesting projects held at a hot springs resort in Tochigi Prefecture in 1981, Satoh places eight speakers approximately one kilometer apart on mountain tops overlooking a huge valley. As a man-made fog rose from below, the music from the speakers combined with laser beams and moved the clouds into various formations. Satoh has collaborated twice since 1985 with theater designer, Manuel Luetgenhorst in dramatic stagings of his music at The Arts at St. Ann's in Brooklyn, New York. ---soundohm.com

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