Marie Igarashi -- Juu-roku-sai no Aki（16才の秋）

 

Over the years, I've heard of folk singers and aidoru getting their opportunities to sing under that huge musical umbrella called City Pop...but opera singers?

Well, that wouldn't be quite accurate. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Marie Igarashi（五十嵐麻利江）, the daughter of tenor Kiyoshi Igarashi（五十嵐喜芳）, would eventually become an opera soprano from the middle of the 1980s onwards through her studies in Italy, but before then, she had her time in the limelight through activities such as co-hosting an NHK variety show in the late 1970s titled "Dassen Mondou"（脱線問答...Tangent Q&A）.

Moreover, during that same time, Igarashi had put out some of her own pop albums...at least two of them. Case in point: there is her 1979 release "Umi wo Kanjiru Toki"（海を感じる時...When I Feel the Sea） and I found this one track "Juu-roku-sai no Aki" (Autumn at 16). Written and composed by soon-to-retire songsmith Kei Ogura（小椋佳）, it's an intriguing number which starts with some snappy bass and percussion before some twangy Steely Dan vibes and then this settled-down mixture of baroque pop strings and bouncy City Pop come into the big picture. Igarashi's vocals are quite light but smoky and they remind me of the tones of another singer, Naomi Sugimura（杉村尚美）, the lead vocalist for the folk/City Pop group Higurashi（日暮し）.

This could be one of the rarest of the rare to acquire but just judging from "Juu-roku-sai no Aki", I would be tempted to seek out and buy "Umi wo Kanjiru Toki". As for that other album, it's known as "Daydream" and it was released in 1981.