Toshinori Kondo - spiritual nature

Toshinori Kondo is a Japanese electric trumpeter who is highly acclaimed not only in Japan but also in Europe and the United States and in Africa. He has been playing all over the world with musicians of all have strong personalities. He has been involved in a great number of concerts and recordings with Bill Laswell[bass], John Zorn[saxophone], Derek Bailey[guitar], Herbie Hancock[keyboard], Peter Brotzmann[saxophone], DJ-KRUSH, Hotei Taizo[guitar] and Eishiba (a kouta singer: a Japanese ballad singer accompanied on the samisen), to name but a few. Born in 1948 in Imabari City in Ehime Prefecture in Japan, Kondo moved to New York in 1978. Until 1983, he has been playing all over the world with many Western musicians. In 1984, he formed a band called IMA (International Music Activities) in Japan and went on a world tour. The band's revolutionary sound − which was fusing all sorts of musical elements of the 20th century such as Rock 'n Roll, jazz and DJing etc − gained great attention. IMA’s music was used for several spot commercials of well-known companies like Shiseido and Asahi Breweries, Ltd. in Japan and Kondo acted in commercials himself. He also wrote serial articles for magazines. He disbanded IMA in 1993 and moved to Amsterdam. He has been pursuing and sharpening his own musical style since and started a project called "Blow the Earth". The first place he played the electric trumpet in an outdoor natural environment was in Negev Desert, Israel in 1993. Then Kondo played on the Andes, Peru in 1994, Kudaka Island in Okinawa, Japan in 1996, Ladakh, Himalaya in 1997, Mt. McKinley, Alaska in 2001 and Kumano, Japan in 2002. He acknowledges three elements, nature, spirit and technology, and aims to confront nature. Some of these performances were shot and shown on NHK as a TV programme. Kondo was requested by the 14th Dalai Lama's Tibetan House New Delri India, to produce one part of the international peace festival called "The World Festival of Sacred Music " held in 2001 at the Itsukushima Shirine on Miyajima in Hiroshima, Japan. He released an album called "The Yoshiwara" (by Eishiba and Toshinori Kondo / Victor Entertainment) in 2003 and was awarded Kikaku-sho (Best Project) at the 45th Japan Record Award. In 2005 he started a new project called “PIKADON Project” with Seitaro Kuroda, Nobuyoshi Araki, Tadao Ando, addressing the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He released his solo album "Fukyo"(2005) from the Tzadik label run by John Zorn. In 2006 he is based in two cities, Amsterdam and Tokyo, and for the first time in twelve years he is doing a lot of shows in Japan. He is enthusiastic about collaborating with many different artists, regardless of artistic genres. There is no doubt that in listening to the work of Toshinori Kondo, who continuously searches for new sounds, one can sense new possibilities for the music scene in the 21st century. In April 2006 Toshinori Kondo held artistic live sessions with Tom Reyes from Los Angels USA an abstract painter. Their heartfelt communication gave birth to sound and painting which invited people into a new world.