Hiroshi Takano & Taeko Ohnuki -- Silent Song

 

I gather that for this Xmas season on KKP, we've had a bit of a running theme coursing its way over the past several weeks thanks to Masamichi Sugi's（杉真理）1997 compilation "Winter Gift Pops" album and Scott's podcast "Holly Jolly X'masu". I've already taken care of a couple of tracks there: Caoli Cano & Hiroshi Takano's（かの香織・高野寛）"First Flight" and Miwako Saito's（さいとうみわこ） cover of "Anata dake I Love You"（あなただけ I LOVE YOU）.

Well, it continues here as well with Takano coming back to do another duet...this time with the illustrious singer-songwriter Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）. Together they perform "Silent Song" which is a fairly languid and intimate tune about spending that special night. Another running theme within "Winter Gift Pops" is that Scott himself even mentioned that not all of the tracks on the album (45:26 on the podcast) strictly adhere to a Christmas theme (it's Winter Gift Pops, not Christmas Gift Pops after all), and "Silent Song" can also be considered to be a more general winter tune.

Still, despite there not being any mention of Christmas in "Silent Song", all sorts of romance can happen on Christmas Eve in Japan (hotels are very busy on the 24th) so why not have "Silent Song" be an honorary Yuletide tune? Takano was responsible for everything in the song with Ohnuki in charge of the chorus arrangement. One more point is that I think this might be the first tune that I've ever encountered that has both a euphonium and a didgeridoo being performed in a song.