Sealed LP: Tomita: Pictures At An Exhibition (QUAD)

$

32

Tomita: Pictures At An Exhibition

FACTORY SEALED LP

• Promenade
• The Gnome
• Promenade
• The Old Castle
• Promenade
• Tuileries
• Bydlo
• Promenade
• Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells
• The Two Jews
• Limoges/Catacombs
• Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua
• Baba Yaga (Hut on Fowls' Legs)
• Great Gate of Kiev

• Ed Begley: Engineer
• Marian Conaty: Engineer
• Plasma Music, Inc.: Producer
• J.J. Stelmach: Art Direction
• Tomita

• Isao Tomita has a real talent for transcribing classical music on the synthesizer. He adds much of his own personality to the new arrangements so they are not straight technical knockoffs. Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition takes on new meanings under Tomita's sensitive and sensible rendering. He is not re-inventing the wheel so all of the original drama and humor is there but the new hooks and riffs have moxy and their own senses of drama and humor. The ambient atmospheres and sci-fi textures give this version an outer space persona. It has become a stroll through an art gallery deep in the Milky Way. This is not quite Tomita's best work but it is close.

• Pioneering Japanese composer and synthesizer expert Isao Tomita bridged the gap between note-by-note classical/electronic LPs like Switched-On Bach and the more futuristic, user-friendly interfaces developed in the 1970s. After creating one of the first personal recording studios with an array of top synthesizer gear in the early '70s, Tomita applied his visions for space-age synthesizer music to his favorite modern composers -- Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel -- though his recordings steered a course far beyond the sterile academics of Wendy Carlos and other synthesists. Born in Tokyo in 1932, Tomita grew up in China as well as Japan, studying composition and music theory as well as art history at Keio University. After graduation in 1955, Tomita began composing film, television and theater music. He was awarded frequently during the 1950s and '60s, and became perhaps the most well-known contemporary Japanese composer.
• By the early '70s, Isao Tomita was introduced to the seminal work of synthesizer gurus Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog, sparking his own interest in synthesized music. In 1973, he formed the electronic collective Plasma Music with musicians Kinji Kitashoji and Mitsuo Miyamoto, and spent more than a year stocking his home studio with electronics gear (including the Moog III used for Carlos' Switched-On Bach). Tomita's first album, 1974's Snowflakes Are Dancing, electrified the Japanese public and even translated to an American classical audience, where it was nominated for four Grammy awards. Successive albums Pictures at an Exhibition, The Firebird Suite and his masterpiece Holst: The Planets infused the classical-synthesizer fusion craze of the 1970s with genuinely exciting, futuristic music instead of the bland, note-by-note translations favored by less visionary musicians. The Planets re-invoked the connection between synthesizer music and science fiction first broached in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet.
• Tomita began incorporating digital synth and early MIDI setups with 1982's Grand Canyon, and completely gutted his studio during the next two years during the transition from analogue to digital with his Casio Cosmo system. Though he recorded more sparingly than in the 1970s, Tomita made frequent appearances at enormous concerts, including his 1984 Austrian show Mind of the Universe before 80,000 people and at the Statue of Liberty centennial celebration two years later. Tomita was also awarded the honorary presidency of the Japan Synthesizer Programmers Association.

FINE PRINT

• All pictures are of the exact item being sold.
• This record came from a record store called "Phantasmagoria" which was located in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Phantasmagoria went out of business in 1978. I purchased most of their leftover inventory some years later when I owned a new & used record store in Catasauqua called "Music Madness".
• Phantasmagoria used round colored stickers to indicate the price of the albums. They had a sign on the wall with the color sticker combinations for the customers to use so they knew the price of the albums. Most of the albums still have these stickers on them, and in some rare cases, the stickers are written on. Some of the records have prices on them. This is the price you would have paid for the record in 1978 if you would have bought it at Phantasmagoria. Please don't confuse these prices with their current value.
• Your item(s) will be shipped within two business days after I receive your payment.
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• All sealed albums are being sold as collector's items and cannot be returned due to manufacturer's defects. It may be almost impossible to replace many of the sealed albums that I am selling.

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