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| WEB JOURNAL #4 - October 2003 Photo Series: Japan 2003 |
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| The last few months for The Idea of North have been both busy and exciting, winning more awards, finishing two albums and touring both nationally and internationally. | |||
| The later part of July saw us touring Japan for the first time. The group was invited to sing at a new club in Tokyo dedicated totally to a cappella singing! The city reminded me of Times Square in New York with neon signs stacked up high on buildings everywhere and the hustle and bustle of the crowded streets below. |
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The newest cocktail: 'The Idea of North' |
A very exciting place to visit! The club we sang at was called “Live House Tasaku”. Incredibly well equipped with the best sound gear money can buy, a great lighting rig and a well stocked bar! Unfortunately space is quite rare in Tokyo and consequently the capacity of the club was around 50 people! Still, we had a great time and sang three nights to a very warm reception. We were thrilled
to discover that we had fans in Japan before we even arrived. Quite a
number of the locals had acquired our albums and had not only enjoyed
listening to them but had also transcribed some of our songs for their
own vocal groups to sing! We ended up one night after our gig singing
along with a Japanese group to our arrangement of Mas Que Nada! We must
get that songbook of ours out soon! |
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In
memory of our visit, “Live House Tasaku” named a cocktail
after us! A refreshing little drink served in a Hi Ball glass. You may
like to try this one at home. |
 Singing at a function at an Australian restaurant in Tokyo |
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To recording news… We have just released our first album as signed artists to the ABC Jazz label! The album, ‘Here and Now’ launched in October, is an exploration of the groups’ musical journey so far, and marks the beginning of what we hope will be a great opportunity to spread the music of the group to an even wider Australian audience. ‘Here and Now’ is available at all ABC shops around Australia. The ABC also invited The Idea of North to perform on its late night music show, ‘Studio 22’. This was a blast performing a full show to a live studio audience with lights…camera…action! You can catch the show on ABC TV on the 18th of November at 11:15pm. |
 Live on Japanese radio |
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 With all the staff at 'Live House Tasaku' |
We also had the privilege, last July, to record a live DVD with James Morrison at the Opera House in Sydney. This was for his latest project called ‘On The Edge’ featuring an awesome band of young performers from Perth and a special guest from Germany, Simon Stockhausen on keyboards. Keep your eyes peeled for the DVD soon to be released. |
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I know that a lot of our fans will be please to hear that we are putting the finishing touches on our next album. It features all new repertoire, never previously recorded by us before, with the exception of the Cole Porter classic, ‘But Not For Me’ featured on ‘ Here and Now’. We couldn’t resist the opportunity to have James Morrison come a play his flugel horn on this track. It’s sweet! The album is entitled ‘Evidence’ and is due to be released early in the New Year. We will be letting our fans know the exact details through our email outs so if you’re not on our emailing list and would like to be in the ‘loop’ you can join up on our website. After winning the 2003 Harmony Sweepstakes in the USA this May we were delighted to return home to take out the Corporate Gold Award at the Sydney Cabaret Festival. We were also nominated for a ‘Mo’ Award three years running and for the first time were nominated for an ACE Award. It’s great to receive this type of recognition from our peers within the music industry. A group that has had a big musical influence on us over many years is The Manhattan Transfer. So of course when we heard they were performing in town last month we jumped at the opportunity to go and see them. It was great to finally see and hear the group live after all those years of listening to their recordings and singing their arrangements in jazz vocal groups. Being no strangers to introducing ourselves to high profile celebrities, we four, cornered The Manhattan Transfer as they were leaving stage door for autographs and a few happy snaps! They were most gracious and even encouraged us to sing two songs for them! Wow! That was a buzz! They now have our latest CD in their album collection back home! Following our successful national tour in October, we will be doing our first European tour this month to Sweden, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Vienna and Switzerland! We have been invited to perform at some festivals and jazz clubs over there and will be taking our special brand of Australian a cappella singing to new audiences. We’ll give you all the news on our return trip in our next journal. Wish us luck! Andrew x |
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