Paul Winter Consort‘s new album Miho: Journey to the Mountain has the following tagline: A celebration of I. M. Pei’s Miho Museum and the Shigaraki Mountains in Japan. Given this I think it would be wise to let Paul Winter give a small presentation his relationship with this museum and what made him dedicate this album to it before commenting the actual music. The story is very interesting:

During the many times I have visited and performed in Japan since the Consort’s first tour in 1987, I dreamed of making an album inspired by the culture and natural beauty of Japan. On each visit I made a trip to a different natural site among the many islands of the archipelago: from Hokkaido in the north, where I saw the tanchos (red-crowned cranes) in Kushiro; to the blue-coral reefs of Ishigaki in the south; the giant Yaku Sugi trees on the island of Yakushima; and the forests of the southernmost island, Iriomote, home to the rare and fabled Iriomote wildcat. I could not have imagined that it would be a museum that enabled me to realize this dream.

Paul Winter

Paul Winter tells about how he in 2000 on a trip to Japan got to visit Miho Museum. It was a visit he would never forget. He writes:

The Miho is like no other museum on the planet. It is an extraordinary marriage of architecture and nature, totally integrated with the landscape. In every corner of it, every cell of the architecture, and every view from its windows out to the surrounding valleys and mountains, there is sublime beauty. I have never before fallen in love with a building. The antiquities of the museum’s collection come from ancient cultures throughout Asia and represent a kind of chronicle of the human journey of the past several thousand years.

Paul Winter

Miho: Journey to the Mountain contains a massie 22 tracks. Some of them are very short though, from 43 seconds to just about 2 minutes. Here we get to hear interesting instruments (like the bendir, the Heckelphone and many others) combined with the sounds of nature. The songs all have the trademark of Paul Winter Consort, which shifts from lonely sounding saxophones to the warmest, most passionate vocals. The album contains one song that hit me immediately ; Arto (Before It´s Too Late). Arto Tuncboyaciyan´s vocal and Jordan Rudess´ keyboard sound totally divine. And there is more, songs like Yangjin (Words Of Wish Fulfillment) and Remembering are carefully crafted masterworks.

Miho: Journey to the Mountain is simply an amazing album. It is interesting, melodic and very creative. It makes you want to visit this special Japanese museum. Paul Winter ends the cover notes with this comment:

No record album production in history has ever had more support than that we received from the staff of the Miho Museum and from the members of the Shumei community. On behalf of all my musical colleagues, I want to convey our great thanks to all of you.

Paul Winter

We here at .nu give our thanks too; you made this wonderful album possible!

Sample the album at Bandcamp. Also take a look at the homepage of the Miho Museum.

Picture Copyright Paul Winter