BRASS AND BAMBOO TAK SHINDO
Brass and Bamboo conducted and arranged by Tak Shindo was released in the year 1960 on the Capitol Records label.
The song tracklist on the Brass and Bamboo album includes the following songs:
Side 1:
Caravan
Poinciana
The Moon Was Yellow
Skylark
No Place To Go
Bali Hai
Side 2:
The Song of Delilah
Flamingo
I'm Beginning To See The Light
The Lamp is Low
Love Is a Many Splendid Thing
Brass and Bamboo
Linear notes on the back album cover includes the following:
Tak Shindo who is one of the busiest musicians on the West Coast, has amassed an impressive list of notable credits in his musical career to date. Television spectaculars, Ed Sullivan shows, Studio One, Wagon Train and Adventure, the film Sayonara, Cinerama's Seven Wonders of the World and the UPA cartoon Village Band are credits included on the Shindo ledger of composing, conducting and orchestration. During a three year hitch with the U.S. Army he was attached to Military Intelligence as a Japanese language instructor with an additional assignment in Special Services writing Army shows and dance band arrangements.
In addition to holding a degree in music from Los Angeles State College, he spent considerable time at the University of Southern California, where he studied composition with Miklos Rozsa. He was also a student of Oriental music under the guidance of Dr. Shigeo Kishibe of the University of Tokyo, perhaps the leading authority in that field today.
In spite of his heavy schedule, Tak still finds time to attend school, work on his forthcoming book, which deals with the history of Japanese music, lecture at various universities on Oriental music, and serve as the head of his delightful household. To add to all of these achievements, Tak has still a further claim to distinction, he's one of those rarities, a genuine native of Los Angeles.
In his sparkling debut as a Capitol recording artist, young Tak Shindo offers a brand new concept in music, combining the exotic sounds of ancient Japanese instruments with modern, big band orchestrations, in tempos and moods that range from ballads to swing.
This, indeed, was a mammoth undertaking, as brass, flutes, clarinets, drums, bass, guitar, and vocal chorus were blended with the koto (the thirteen-string zither whose strange, harp-like tunes are heard throughout the album). Kabuki drums, the samisen (three-string guitar), bamboo flutes, Buddha temple gongs and an assortment of bells and chimes. To add to the difficulty, Miss Kazue Kudo, featured here on koto and samisen, speaks limited English and reads only Japanese music, having only recently arrived here from her native Japan.
As the listener can hear, the problems at hand were all skillfully overcome, and with sensational results.
The music is different and exciting, full of thrilling effects created by subtle contrast of Oriental sounds framed against a solid back-ground of swinging dance arrangements that feature such instrumental greats as Milt Bernhart, Conte Candoli, Pete Candoli, Shelly Manne, Ted Nash and Bud Shank.
The selections consist of ten standards and two originals, including the title number by Tak Shindo, who also did all but three of the imaginative arrangements (Bill Holman scored No Place to Go, The Song of Delilah and The Moon Was Yellow). Each tune is cleverly "oriental" to this brilliant blend of two musical cultures in a dynamic fusion of sounds and ideas.
So here is Brass and Bamboo - Tak Shindo's new Japanese-American plan for musical enjoyment, as American as "Ichiban" as Japanese as "it swings".
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