Joe Hisaishi -- Summer

Kinda nice to bring this one in, especially since we've apparently got snow coming in as we approach the weekend here. I was watching tonight's extended "Uta Kon"（うたコン）when a quintet of shakuhachi players gave a brief performance of a song that immediately sparked familiarity from years back. The fact that it was composed by the famous Joe Hisaishi（久石譲）then sparked me to search for "Summer".

It took me a while to track it down but "Summer" was used for some years as the music for Toyota Corolla commercials in Japan. With that gently flowing piano, it did feel like a Hisaishi composition.

Originally though, "Summer" was the theme song for the Takeshi Kitano/Beat Takeshi（北野武・ビートたけし）film "Kikujiro no Natsu"（菊次郎の夏...Kikujiro） that had come out in 1999. Despite hearing it as a most wonderful background piece for those Toyota ads all those years, tonight was the first time that I heard the song in its entirety. Starting off feeling a bit reminiscent of "Krazy Klock", a song that my junior high school band class practiced ad nauseum, the familiar theme comes in before things take on somewhat of an overture-like feeling. I never saw "Kikujiro no Natsu" but I assume that parts of "Summer" were used throughout the score for the movie.

Nice to get that warm melodic glow again although we are in November now.