Yoshitaka Mihara -- Urban Night Cruisin'

 

Yup, I'd think that for a lot of overseas City Pop fans who have yet to make it to Japan, getting on that night drive through Tokyo would be one of the must-do things on the itinerary. I'd suggest at least a cruise through Ginza, then onto Tokyo Bay Bridge into Odaiba, before making the trip up to West Shinjuku for one night at least.

Along with the usual City Pop classics as musical accompaniment, perhaps I can also suggest another song out of the blue. That would be electone player and keyboardist Yoshitaka Mihara's（三原善隆）"Urban Night Cruisin'" from his October 2000 album "Progress". Earlier this year, I introduced the Hokkaido musician through his "Summer Sunset" on his well-regarded 1993 album "Night Rider". Well, with "Urban Night Cruisin'", your ride through the capital city or any major city on the Japanese archipelago can have a bit more class and sophistication and Henry Mancini-esque swing.

"Progress" apparently is Mihara's last album to date although according to his J-Wiki profile, he's been holding his annual "Mihara Yoshitaka Super Session"（三原善隆SUPER SESSION）events with plenty of guests. I'm assuming that some of those guests were involved in "Progress" such as jazz pianist Hiroko Kokubu（国府弘子）, the late and great saxophonist Jake H. Concepcion and bassist Naoki Watanabe（ 渡辺直樹）.

Yoshitaka Mihara -- Summer Sunset

 

I've always loved this sunset photo taken outside of the former site of the final English school that I'd worked at in Tokyo. The building housed an insurance company among other corporations but in the basement, they had daily bento counters set up which garnered a lot of attention from hungry corporate warriors including a teacher like myself. I guess that I was a frequent purchaser since all of the old ladies there smiled and greeted me warmly. For good karaage, I'll walk kilometres and gain kilograms.

Yoshitaka Mihara（三原善隆）is a Hokkaido-born keyboardist specializing in the electone. Graduating from the Yamaha Music Academy with a degree in that instrument, he's also worked at the Yamaha Music Foundation before making his debut as a performer in 1991. In April 1993, he came up with his first album "Night Rider" which garnered Mihara a lot of praise among the music community.

Other musicians such as pianist Hiroko Kokubu（国府弘子）and trombonist Eiji Arai（新井英治）have helped out in Mihara's albums, and I think both have their prints, so to speak, in this track on "Night Rider", "Summer Sunset". This may have been a 1993 creation but there's something about this particular song that takes me back several more years into the late 1970s at least. "Summer Sunset" has some dreamy passages but also some somewhat more uptempo areas which makes me wonder whether the song should have been re-titled into "Summer Day in a Life", but I have absolutely no complaints about this track and I ought to give the title track a listen as well. At the same time, I have to give my compliments to that wonderful photo of a bridge on the front cover.

Mihara has also come up with a number of songs that have been used for commercials and opening themes for television shows. By the way, the above is a video of the Yamaha Electone Festival in Singapore as put up by the Yamaha Music School there.