Percy Faith? Japan? Starting in 1966, Percy began concert tours of about a month's duration, around 20 cities, throughout Japan, where people loved to hear his renditions of popular music, including Gershwin and showtunes. The Japanese audiences love his music and through all these years, Percy's original manuscripts brought his arrangements to life in Japanese concert halls, to listeners young, old, and in-between. Too bad it can't happen in the "corporate" environment of the United States... In the spring of 1976, just a few months after his death, the concert that sadly became a "tribute to Percy Faith" was conducted by DAVID ROSE. Then for many years, Alan Broadbent took the baton, followed in the 90's by the late Nick Perito. Orchestra manager Terry Woodson, conductor for Frank Sinatra, Jr., now conducts the live sounds of Percy Faith arrangements via tours of several Japanese cities every few years. I plan to post one or two of these concerts as recorded by Marilyn on her Sony Handicam, she was always seated near the back of the concert hall, but the simple-yet-beautiful stages were well captured.
KOGA MELODIES - HATTORI MELODIES
Note that Hattori was released in the midst of the "SQ Quad" frenzy and unlike some of Faith's domestically released albums, sounds excellent on the SQ album. Taragon, however, chose to use what must have been the two-channel mix for the CD reissue now available; the mix is very different and rather diffuse and "in my opinion" not better than the Lp (the opposite from my impressions of other Faith SQ releases where the albums sounded terrible with very isolated tracks and exagerrated out-of-phase material used to "drive" the sound to the back speakers, especially if you had a receiver with "Wavematching Logic" that would steer the apparent sound of all channels to what would be the loudest. Put another way, the SQ releases of Faith's albums, e.g., "Clair" - sound lousy. The standard stereo mixes are fine, though it is my understanding that "Clair" and all albums after that were recorded using 8-tracks, mixed down and customary reverb added for 2-channel stereo. I was also told that Percy Faith was most likely the very last "holdout" who didn't want "multitrack" recordings.
"It was just after the War when I heard the name of Percy Faith for the first time. I had been attracted by the music of Kostelanetz with its flavor of symphonic jazz before I heard Percy Faith, and when I received the record of my melodies made by Percy Faith, I was so excited that I felt as though I was a child. As I enjoyed the Koga Melodies Lp, I had looked forward to hearing the Percy Faith arrangements of my melodies. The arrangements are unique. I am an arranger myself and I heard his arrangements with critical ears, however, his arrangements, with preludes and interludes which I could never think of, utterly knocked me down. I felt unavoidable difference in attitude toward music which probably came from cultural difference. The same can be said if I arranged some American music. It is very welcome that many Japanese music melodies are played by various musicians abroad and that Japanese melodies are introduced to world music lovers. I look forward to seeing Percy Faith on his next trip to Japan. - Ryoichi Hattori"
