I told you things were going to get real here. Let’s get intimate. Let’s get closer to the work of Yukie Nishimura. Call it various names: neoclassical, ambient, new age, easy listening or BGM. You can call it anything you want but you can’t call it boring. Romantic is the key word here. Take one listen to Yukie Nishimura’s L’espoir (what I consider to be the pinnacle of her career) and you’re bound to turn into a fan. Much like Satsuki Shibano, Hajime Mizoguchi, and Toshifumi Hinata, Yukie belongs in that class of classically-trained virtuosos who refuse to rest on the laurels of the past.
Just barely 19, Japan’s Pony Canyon furiously competed with others to sign this precocious pianist. Precocious she wasn’t. Yukie had wowed audiences worldwide, touring as a piano-playing child prodigy. Her debut, Angelique, had all the trappings of an unsure beginning. Inspiring, because she wrote it entirely herself. Underwhelming, too, because the production reigns were left to others who didn’t quite understand what she was going for. You could sort of tell that Pony Canyon was trying to capitalize on her easy-on-the-eyes appearance and trying to shuffle her along as some malleable Japanese Liz Story or Ciani, New Age-y tart (which they all obviously weren’t). Worse yet they imagined her ideas as mere music for the older crowd who did not want to be ruffled by too much of newfound ideas and production.
Beginning from 1988’s Lyrisme, Yukie managed to take the full reins of her own work. From production to picking out art direction, session musicians, and arrangers, everything became her stewardship. From then on we could hear her vision truly blossom. Dabbling in reggae, fusion, bossa nova, latin jazz, techno kayo, and toying far away from the flavor of the month “impressionistic” music of lesser known artists, making her first steps into “ambient”-like and far more Japanese-style New Age music.
As her ideas brought all sorts of interesting left field songs, more modern forms of instrumentation and arrangements. You can imagine hearing this icon of swooning romantic Japanese CM/drama music then, using her technique on samplers, digital synths and sequencers
Through 1989’s Lumiere, we hear an interesting crevice start to develop. As her ideas become increasingly more malleable, somehow they get entirely more luxurious and romantic. If ever you’ve heard “地平線 (New Version)” you understand what I mean. Her taste level was just operating on another level. Songs both your mama and yourself can appreciate, hid surprisingly complex ideas that just sound positively timeless. Through it all we began to notice that this was now a woman who actually found a way to grow up into her music. Now, her music actually reflected what she wanted to do — moments of tenderness, moments of love, moments of darkness. All those moments had music that couldn’t just function as BGM (as hard as Pony Canyon wanted to make it so).
Recorded just after graduating from college, L’espoir, sounds like the cherry on top of her curated path. Within it we hear all sorts of in-between mood music that hints at the works of Jobim, Satie, and others. Featuring some of her most inspired collaborators — Hajime Mizoguchi, Toshihiro Nakanishi, Shiro Sagisu, and Hiroshi Narumi — L’espoir simultaneously gets at the essence (sonically, visually, and symbolically) of her vision and does so by stripping it back to its bare essence.
Here’s where I default to making you think back to Gontiti’s like-minded work. Here we find Yukie on songs like “ひっくり返ったおもちゃ箱” and “Musée D’Orsay ~オルセー美術館にて~” tweak that glowing nocturnal romanticism of the past with all sorts of oddball ideas that actually work, predicting vaporous, wavy things (for lack of a better term). The fact her taste level never allows her to stumble into pastiche absolves her from such earnestness.
I can only imagine how many hearts swooned when they heard a track like “木漏れ日の中で” or “Déjà-Vu”. Unsurprisingly the latter a fleshed-out composition from a Nitto Tea CM, now sounding resplendent with Hajime’s swooping cello and Yukie’s glistening piano playing. L’espoir is where her impressionistic beginnings come to full fruition, letting all sorts of graceful melodies just amble on with her own touch driving it wherever it may. Abstract it may no longer be, aged as it might be, I hope we never feel old enough or young enough to not appreciate and (better yet) understand the trailing contours of lovely works like these. What else can I say, ‘tis the season for something like this.