Cool Strings - Seiji Hiraoka

 

Michelle

Cool Strings And Ohta-san

Producer: Don McDiarmid, Jr.

Liner Notes: Jean Sullivan

Cover Photo: Werner Stoy, Camera Hawaii

Cover Art: Neiman Advertising

Recorded in Hawaii for Surfside Records SF 102

1968

From the back cover: You have listened to these songs before, but now you will hear them, the way you  hear them in your heart. This is how it sounds to look ahead to love, to meet love, to be in love, to remember love. This answers loud the thought not yet spoken. This describes the real that is better than any dream. This tells what you mean, but so often cannot say. All this sweet splendor is such a good thing to come from such a small box... delivered by Ohta-san, one of the world's great master of the ukulele.

The happy voice and endearing young charm have been regarded as typically Hawaiian since some ninety years ago. Elsewhere, the ukulele has owed its enduring popularity to other qualities: it is so portable, so inexpensive, so easy to learn, so... hardly anyone took it seriously. The very advantages that recommend it to the instant musician, conspired toward its neglect by the professional.

But in Hawaii, the ukulele has long since come of age as a major solo instrument. The Island people explored the possibilities and developed techniques of virtuoso calibre. The sparkling showcase that here displays to most excellent advantage the lyric nature and dramatic qualities of this instrument is the concerto form, where the ukulele dominates a symphonic orchestral group. Though it suggest harp and harpsichord, guitar, and zither, banjo and balalaika... the outstanding sound in this cool concerto is, unmistakable, the ukulele's own. In the hands of Ohta-san, it is stunningly effective.

A worthy foil to the effortlessly intricate and simply beautiful artistry of Ohta-san, is the group called "The Cool Strings," a most cool affair that's a sure thing for instant international importance. Conductor-arranger Seiji Hiraoka dares to mix Mozart with Montoya, contrast the sophisticated involutions of Bach with the ABC rhythm of rock, introduce Debussy to the Beatles and give violins a mod beat. It comes on as a free-form but invisibly disciplined collage of sound.

In this music is a flag of torch fire fluttering in the cool of twilight... the cool of a club-drift shadowing a summer noon... the cool of a moon path leading over the edge of a night-back ocean... the cool that breathes from a white flower painted gold by the dawn.  In this music is the way it feels to float on a warm, transparent sea, and guess the touch of unseen soft ribbons of fresh water drifting up from spinets under the sand below, lacing the salt with cool. In this music is the sudden translation of sun into rainbow buy the cool crystal of a prism. In this must are things beautiful and rare, that you have seen and loved, or imagined and longed for. You have listened to this song before, but now you will hear them, the way you hear them in your heart.

The Girl From Ipanema

Try To Remember

Ma Belle

Lara's Theme

I Will Wait For You

People

Shadow Of Your Smile

Yesterdays

Days Of Wine And Roses

Hawaii

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Born Free