21 seiki e no densetsushi Shigeo Nagashima

Recently picked up this soundtrack (Media Factory ZMCZ-657). Its a
soundtrack about a famous baseball player. Tomita released it in 2000.
He mentioned that it as the project he had to dive into the next day
when I met him in Tokyo. I figured I should eventually pick it up now
that a lot of Japanese titles from everyone are dissappearing and since
I had been putting it off until I got to japan... but nick is broke
right now and can't find enough paying jobs.

Quite listenable acoustic orchestral score. Its a blend of suitable
fanfare/heroics and other times that kind of sentimental Japanese
orchestral style Tomita undoubtedly contributed to the formation of
decades ago. I see one piece is played in 3 versions, one each for
Shigeo Nagashima's uniform numbers.

There is no other text on the album in English besides "Isao Tomita"
respectably on the cover, the label's logo and the fine print "For Sale
in Japan Only". Wonder where else besides Japan that japanese baseball
is popular enough to liscence this, one would think that other nations
that like Baseball wouldn't be interested in Japanese baseball, but
maybe I'm wrong. That sort of labeling is legally very important and
reflects that foreign rights are owned or anticipated being owned by
some other company. A friend of mine had big headaches once when he
fogot someone else still had Japanese rights to his album, rereleased it
in the U.S. where he had the rights and then was contacted by lawyers
when someone saw the album being sold as an import in Japan without the
converse "Not for Sale In Japan" fine print.

As a bonus they reproduce 4 foldout full pages of the orchestral score
which includes 2 synth parts coventionally hand notated. I would assume
from that and the sound that Tomita is definitely doing own
orchestration here but I don't know for sure (traditionally someone like
Jerry Goldsmith or Danny Elfman nearly always use an orchestrator while
some other ideosyncratic orchestral composers never do (Bernard Hermann
was one of the the first major film composer to do that when few did).
Hans Zimmer apparently orchestrates via sampler and sequencer by playing
and then re-records acoustic, wonder if Tomita does that? We know he's
been using sequencer programs like Studio Vision and Nuendo. Tomita is
using a bit of shorthand like writing a chord over a repeating motif
rather than fully notating it or using an arrow presumably meaning
playing in octaves down from the line written.

I think the whole emphasis seems to be Tomita is doing a "real" score
and is
high quality writer of orchestral music. He writes in Japanese about the
music and there is a picture of him not seen on other albums of him
filling the back of the booklet. A round sticker says presumably
"Composed by Isao Tomita" (in Japanese). blowups of his score are used
subtly as a background texture graphic when bat closeups aren't being used.

nick

http://www.artcontext.com/music/artskool/jem/it.html