| Probably one of the most anticipated events at Anime
Expo was the Yuki Kajiura concert and most of the A-S members
attended agree! |
The concert was supposed to take place on Friday at 5:00 pm.
Well couple hours before the concert was supposed to start,
the lines were already in full swing as hundreds of fans lined
up to get good seats. We eagerly didn’t go line up that
early because we wanted to be actually doing things at AX2003
rather than spend the majority of our time in lineups but when
we eventually did line up… it was horrifying to see the
lineup has stretched right across the entire floor of the convention
hall and to OUTSIDE on to the roof!
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The massive lines begin to form
A-S with the other Press staff in a very empty
concert room
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The line ends up oustide on the roof!
Kaiser and Panda in the front row of the concert!
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| Sitting in what little shade they could find
were the masses of Yuki Kajiura fans waiting to get in about
1 hour even before the concert was scheduled to start. Panda
and myself waited with the rest of the group until we had to
meet up with the rest of the Press members who were allowed
to go in early. We had a nice Press area set aside for us and
it was front row center, so these pictures you see, no one will
have a better shot because A-S was at the very front row ;)
Shot of the stage from our seats
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Finally people waiting outside are allowed to
fill the concert room
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Well the concert finally started after a LONG wait
with the Pioneer guy coming out to talk about Yuki Kajiura and
how lucky we were to be the first audience to see and hear Yuki
Kajiura in a private live performance. |
After that Yuki Kajiura and her little group
came out to perform six of her songs to promote her new CD “Fiction”.
They were in order:
Open your heart
Fake wings
Canta per me
Key of the twilight
Vanity
Obsession
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Pioneer guy!
Yuki comes out!
Beginning the music
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"Open your heart"
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I was pretty much stunned at the music coming out
from her group (Yuki Kajiura: keyboards, Susumu Nishikawa: guitar,
Hitoshi Konno: violin, Emily Bindiger: vocals). The quality of
the sound was simply amazing and breathtaking. I was getting chills
down my spine listening to the music live that I’ve heard
all so many times in the anime series Noir and .hack//SIGN. |
| After each song Yuki would come out and say a few
things and add her comments about songs and her experiences in
composing. |
Pioneer guy translating for Yuki Kajiura
|
Emily Bindiger
|
First she praised Emily Bindiger by saying she ‘fell
in love’ with the vocalist’s voice, Indeed Emily is
featured in some 10 or so .hack//SIGN and even more Noir songs.
She also jokingly called Emily her English teacher. |
| She introduced Susumu Nishikawa as her guitarist
from her musical group Seesaw and long time collaborator in her
music. Susumu’s guitar rifts are heard distinctively in
the .hack//SIGN soundtracks. |
Susumu Nishikawa
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Hitoshi Konno
|
The last person she introduced was Hitoshi Konno.
This violist was also another long time collaborator who worked
with Yuki on both of her major projects. All of the violin solos
and melody heard distinctively in the Noir and .hack//SIGN soundtracks
is performed by Hitoshi. |
| She also mentioned that for one of the tracks, she
didn’t know what to name the song until the end. For the
longest time, the song ‘fake wings’ was just simply
referred to as Suburo because she couldn’t come up with
a suitable name. |
Talking to the audience
|
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Yuki also told the audience her favorite character
in the .hack//SIGN series was Sola but she couldn’t compose
a song for her even though she really wanted to ;) |
Singing Italian!
|
She gave some background information about ‘canta per
me’ telling us that she loved Italian music and therefore
she wrote the song and others in Italian even though Noir was
set mostly in France. |
The stage
|
| Yuki also told us about her experience with the
anime world with the director of Noir and .hack//SIGN allowing
her to do whatever she felt was appropriate in music for the songs.
After she completed the songs, the director simply just put the
songs in where he felt it was suited and she thinks he liked ‘canta
per me’ quite a bit since its repeated a lot in the Noir
series. But with this free creativity came questions since for
some characters she had to compose a song for because it’s
very unusual to know the whole storyline before composing. One
example was Tsubasu (.hack//SIGN), she didn’t know his or
her gender and accidentally gave out the ending spoiler while
the audience jokingly booed her for spoiling the series =P |
Violin and Guitar
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Violin Solo
Guitar Solo
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Another was Athena (Noir), she wasn’t too
sure about this character when she composed Athena’s song
either.
After the six song set was completed, the same crew left to
a huge standing applause and then came back for an encore of
two more songs before leaving us for good.
There was a mad rush for the ‘Fiction’ CDs and
I tried to buy one but it was sold out within 5 minutes after
the concert. Quite a shame too since Yuki was going to be autographing
any albums the next day. I quickly found out that her album
was sold out everywhere in AX2003 =(
|
| Well, if you do find her album ‘fiction’
in a store near you, I highly recommend you pick it up. It contains
some old classic songs of hers as well as some brand new songs
never heard before. Vanity being one of them she played for us
in her concert and it was great =)
Fiction Album
01. key of the twilight
02. cynical world
03. fake wings
04. fiction
05. vanity
06. canta per me
07. zodiacal sign
08. awaking
09. open your heart
10. winter
11. salva nos
Fiction is available since July 1st, 2003 in North America
only.
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The end?
Encore!
Unbelievable performace...
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