True Companions

As a young man, one of the ways I knew I was ready to get married was that I had a desire to share my life’s experiences with someone. I was an itinerant musician, traveling around the country doing shows, concerts and what have you. I was happy, doing exactly what I wanted to do. But at some point it just seemed that the interesting places I went, people I met, food I ate, and diversions I enjoyed all lacked that something that comes from sharing it with someone. So when Karen Rogers came along I knew that I had found that someone. She has been my traveling companion ever since, enduring the rough road and the smooth with grace and (mostly) good humor. Now here we are 32 years later. I’m still an itinerant musician doing shows, concerts and what have you. Back in the day the view we shared may have been a huge dead cow and a jackknifed semi in the middle of a country road that was blocking our way to a gig in Nebraska. Or the back side of Roy Clark at show after show after show. Today it’s Mt. Fuji out the window of the bullet train or green tea with gold leaf floating in it. But the experience is basically the same. I can honestly say that back in 1976 neither of us would have given much thought to where we would be in 32 years. But now I know the answer; Seoul, Korea.

Yahama Music

On Monday Karen and I continued west as the cast returned to Tokyo. The reason was an invitation to tour the Yamaha instrument factory in Hamamatsu. The city is beautifully situated on a plain with mountains off to the North and the Pacific Ocean to the South. Others must find it accommodating because Honda, Suzuki and other famous Japanese corporations have facilities there as well. We got a presentation on some of the advanced acoustics work they are doing and then had a chance to see where they make the instruments for which Yamaha is famous. It is interesting to see a whole room full of people looking down the barrels of bassoons, hammering discs of brass into trombone bells or handmaking $40,000 flutes. My enduring image is of a trombone slide technician, sitting amidst state-of-the-art laser and other high tech manufacturing methods adjusting trombone slide tubes by bending them over his knee!

Gunma/Shizuoka

It was a relief to get on the road for Gunma and Shizuoka. Everyone was a bit done in from our labors at Disney so it was a quiet, restorative ride to Gunma as a dozen people read, listened to music, looked out the window or napped. I observe that people who succeed at what we do have certain qualities in common. One is a natural curiosity and an interest in new experiences. They tend to be up for trying new foods, visiting new places and having new experiences. They are self-contained to the extent that they usually have something to hand that they are reading, listening to, or working on. One inescapable part of being on the road is that there is a lot of just hanging around in airports, dressing rooms and train stations waiting for the next thing to happen. So patience is a virtue. We all live very closely together so other basic adult skills such as being on time and having some consideration for the sensibilities of others are paramount to having a smooth happy tour. We have been blessed to have talented people who are also good people and I hope it will always be thus.

Some of the cast had remembered that the Gunma audience was quite responsive last year and so it proved again as they gave us a thunderous ovation at the end.

Tokyo Disney Sea

The last several days have been a blur of activity and so I’ll try to just hit the high spots in order not to annoy either of my readers. On Thursday we checked out of the Tokyo Dome Hotel and headed out to Tokyo Disney Resort. Disney on Classic (our tour) is collaborating with Disney Resort to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of Disney in Japan. Disney Resort now includes Disneyland, DisneySea, several hotels, a shopping mall and a new Cirque’ du Soliel theater. A cool monorail circles the park and shuttles guests between several stations.

The event was an invitation-only series of 4 concerts in the Broadway Theater at Tokyo DisneySea. This was all a bit nostalgic for me because I did the soundtrack for the show that opened that theater in 2001. Many of my friends still work there and seeing them brought back happy memories of the hours we spent together creating that show. But bringing a live concert event into a theme park setting is a bit like teaching a dog to walk on its hind legs. It can be done but the results may look a bit artificial. Theme park shows are meticulously planned to exclude anything unexpected or improvisational. Once installed, they don’t change. By contrast, live concerts allow performers latitude to create (within limits) based on the needs of the moment. Every day is different and the show grows and develops with each performance. Theme park shows are brief - typically 20-30 minutes, whereas our concerts are 2 1/2 hours (including intermission). I must confess that the theme park need for control elicited a bit of the inbred rebelliousness which American performers exhibit when they feel they are being are dictated to. So there was a bit of a “dance” as we all tried to figure out the best way to bring these two together. Then there is the “Mickey Factor” which means that we’re all working for Mickey. But when all was said and done the live symphony orchestra, singers, large cast of Disney Characters including Mickey and Minnie created an irresistible hour of entertainment for those lucky enough to get a ticket. I’m not sure it was a good concert but it was an entertaining hour nonetheless. We did this 4 times and called it a (long) day.