Essay of My Wonderful Life, Bond, Twelve and Vanilla

What do you imagine, when you hear "Bond" "12" and "Vanilla"? If you could easily find it out, you need not to read this essay farther more.

However if you would think that James Bond is not 12 but 007 or why vanilla ice cream is related to them, I could give you a useful information.

To tell the truth, they are the names of three different female artists' music performance groups, respectively Europe, China and Japan.

When I asked my friends of same generation, most of them showed me puzzled faces. They don't know them. I am afraid that they are too busy, they have no time to enjoy their free time or they have no interest on music performance. However I would like to recommend these groups to such friends. It is not an exaggeration for me to say that you'd get a disadvantage if you don't know them. After you would listen to their music and watch DVD, I believe that you would be so impressed by them. Their music is quite wonderful. In addition, they are not only good performers but also very beautiful and photogenic like supermodels.

I think that the girls in these days have been brought up by their parents with full of love since their childhood, because they are mostly very pretty and also they have quite big physiques. But they are not only that. They have education of well-trained classical music. As the results, they are well-educated, young, pretty and classically trained musicians. No wonder why they have become very popular, when they started their performance activity.

All of members of these three groups are such lucky girls. However still I can observe that there are big differences among them. If I would give them a score with 10 points, I would dare to say 8 points for Bond (England-based), 6 points for Twelve Girls Band (China) and only 3 points for Vanilla Mood (Japan).

The evaluation is not depending upon their beauty and skill. Being based on these standpoints, there seemed to be almost no difference among them. I think these differences are created the difference of abilities of their management. This is the point that I want to emphasize. If you would feel boring the sentences below, please stop reading at the moment and listen trial music through each official websites of these groups. Especially the website of Bond is very nice and very friendly to the guests. You can even listen to their music shortly.

Hereafter I will compare these three groups. The first group that I will comment is the Bond. I am sure how shocking you are to see their extreme figure, style and catch-phrase such as "The 21st century, Super-beauty string quartet. Elegant, passionate, sexy sensation of Bond four beautiful women". However it is too early to be surprised to see them. Their music is the mysterious melody of the mixture of classical music, the Middle East music and the Central Europe.

When I was the junior high school student, I was so impressed by listening to the record of Khachaturyan's "Sword dance". Bond performs sward dance on the title of "Highly Strang" They wrote, "This is the wild version of sword dance. You can listen to our crazy and distorted performances and guitars. This is just like as competition or match. This music is mad, terribly crazy and fast!" Yes, it is crazy. However their creating sound comes from classical music itself.

That should be so, because these four beautiful women, named Haylie Ecker (first violin), Eos Chater (second violin), Tania Davis (viola) and Gay-Yee Westerhoff (cello), are graduates of famous Academy of Music either in London or in Australia. And that they were top students. Normally, classic music players would perform in the concert of the classical music, wearing formal wears. However they didn't like such too formal style.

On their website, they wrote;

We met each other by the introduction of Mr. Mel Bush, who was the legend concert promoter and manager. He handled red Zeppelin, David. Bowie and the Queen, etc. Since then we have had the same vision for our future. We have no more formal dress or official style. We are completely free from authority, led by the conductor. We breeze the air freely. Although their instruments are classical, but they do not follow the tradition. They are filled with harmony and the ambition. We, four free musicians, named ourselves as "Bond (bond and integration)", which was the symbol of their standpoints, harmony and the ambition.

Yes, exactly they are like this. I think their music is

the mysterious mixture of various kinds of music, such as classics, gypsy music, passionate music of South America and so on. First of all, they released the first single album "Victory" in Britain in August, 2000. I listend to this album. I was so surprised because it had the classic legitimate, but not only that. It has "a wild vitality". Their recent music is more powerful than before. I am afraid the elderly people would be tired to listen. So I want to recommend such people to listen their early stage music album.

I am so impressed not only by their wonderful album, but also by their producer, Mr. Mel Bush. He created the concept of Bond. He found out some suitable composer for them. He also planned their stage-dress. For example, their concept was that sexily classics, superior, stylish and elegant. All of these ideas made Bond successful. I think this is the job done by the professional.

By the way, the next group, named as the Twelve Girls Band was produced by Mr. Wang Xiaojing. He seemed to be so talented. He has a good concept and seems to have the strong will to realize it. However the only one point that I frown my eyebrow is that he is too outstanding on the website of "Twelve Girls Band". This is not the website to sell him, but to advertise this girl band. If so, the girls themselves should be focused, not the producer himself. Or is this Chinese style? Maybe he has the feeling that he is the owner of this group. Anyway I will introduce his interview.

"I think that I could succeed in making the public interested in the Chinese traditional folkloric music in China. Even in China, the number of those who listen to our traditional music has been increasing gradually. However through the performance of the Twelve Girls Band, the people who listen to the classics music have been decreasing now. Moreover, the number of children who also learn the native musical instrument has increased. Therefore, I think that my band contributes to the folkloric music very much.

However, I think I will never change the traditional music through the activity of our band. To the contrary, I would like to create something new through our original style. I will make our original fans and take the walk on an original road. The important things are to create our originality."

I fully agree with Mr. Wang Xiaojing's saying. I am also one of listeners who are stirred by the music of the Twelve Girls Band. I like their traditional sound but the modern concept. In that sense, the Twelve Girls Band has the similarity with the Bond. Just like as the Bond, all of the members of the Twelve Girls Band are the graduates of the famous Chinese musical colleges. Because they are using traditional musical instrument, every time when I listen their music I feel nostalgias and imagination to the atmosphere related to the Silk Road. I am sure they are successful.

However according to my evaluation, the score of the Twelve Girls Band is lower than the one of the Bond. I think that the Twelve Girls Band has two week points. One is that the number of 12 is too many to make the audience impress. I can't identify who is who or who has what kind of personality. I think this is not only because I am getting old. As they make use of four kinds of Chinese traditional musical instrument, harp, lute, Chinese violin and whistle, the number of them should be eliminated to at least four or at most six. Another is that their stage dress is very plain and too much following to the Western concert style. They should make more use of Chinese traditional style. However these are not always fatal deficits. The world that Mr. Wang Xiaojing created can cover such small defects.

At the last, I will make a comment on a quartet group, named as the Vanilla Mood. This group consists of four women students at the Tokyo University of Arts. Every week days they perform music at the regular program of NHK broadcasting organization. As I sometimes watch this program, I knew them through the TV. They are Keiko (piano), Yui (violin), Mariko (cello) and Waka (flute). All of them are so beautiful women and their skills of performing musical instrument are not so bad. However I am so disappointed by the management. It is so poor.

For instance, their stage dresses are too various and too different. Although it the performance of same day and the same program. However Keiko wears short pants, Yui wears long skirts and short sleeves, Mariko has jeans and Waka wears another. Why are they like this? There is no common matching policy to each other. Of course to see them respectively, each dress fits to each person very much. However to compare with the next person, it is strange. I am wondering why is this.

When I watched the website of the Vanilla Mood, I felt that I found the reason. It showed the sponsors of their dresses. And that there were many apparel companies. That's why they separately offered their apparels of different type of clothes. I would like to recommend them that they should accept same kinds or similar kinds of clothes for one performance of the same stage. They should have the sense of selecting dresses.

But there is another type of deficit on this group. I am afraid that the members seemed not have the professional sense or consciousness. When I watched their TV performance on NHK. At that time, Ms. Emilee, the violinist, suddenly went away from the studio, saying that she would have to take the test. Soon she left from the group and new member Ms. Waka joined. What did it happen?

When I compare the Vanilla Mood and the Bond, I am surprised the big difference between them. The Vanilla Mood is just like an ice cream, sweet, cool and soft. But soon we will forget about their taste. To the contrary, the Bond is a huge energy. Once we listen to their music, style and fashion, we could not forget about them. Is it because of the difference between agricultural race and hunting race? Or has the entire Japanese lost wild energy? To tell the truth, it is the matter that I am so worried about. Also I am warred about Japanese boys. Why are only Japanese girls outstanding now?

( March 1, 2005)

(Note) The photographs of each group are from their website. The gif picture under the title is from Seasonal Window website.