Yukie Nishimura (西村由紀江)

I have just imported a CD from Japan at this website (www.cdjapan.co.jp). The artiste is Yukie Nishimura which had been my lifelong favourite pianist. I had not failed to listen to her songs everyday (since secondary school). Let me intro to you guys a little info about her.



Yukie Nishimura (西村由紀江) had been playing piano since 3 yrs of age and her talent had been recognised at a young age. She is a member of the Yamaha JOC (Junior Original Concert) where she toured extensively throughout America, Europe and Asia where her performance had been praised by many. Her activities had been diverse where she had been into commercials (Sapporo Breweries), starred in various drama series and even wrote essays. As a part of her ongoing lifework, she had actively participated in school concerts in order to convey the piano charm and broaden her music to the public. Many had claimed that her music 'engulfs' the listener with emotion and certainly I do feel the same whenever I listened to her music. I mean you can imagine, I listened to her album for many years and still could not get bored. Her composition style is definitely different from the likes of Kevin Kern and Jim Brickman where the influence of jazz is quite apparent but, not overwhelming. The main difference between her and the rest is that, the flow of notes which she had chosen contains more emotion in it. It is difficult to describe but certainly you have to witness it for yourself.

This feeling is intensified when you are playing her original scores on a piano and certainly I have done that too. From her musical scores, the situation is so different compared to when you are casually listening where just to get the right tempo, speed and weight, I had to practice on my piano for the whole month on a single song alone!! What's more, if you are playing from a 'first glance' basis, you seriously need some very high technical prowess to play those songs not to mention, you need an above average long fingers too where some of her songs I could not play due to my 'normal' length fingers.

Well, I have 2 of her CD's (really precious!) entitled Ballistic Kiss (not available in Japan) and Tsukiiro no Tsubasa (月いろのつばさ) while the rest are in tapes. As the tapes have been damaged through fungus, I am planning to embark on an extensive re-collection on CD's and I am estimating, the collection will be completed by next year or so. For your info, alot of her CD's had been out of print and I am not sure they will be available anymore. To make matters worst, I think I have lost 1 or 2 CD's from my collection as I had lend them to others. Damn myself...

Well I have scoured at Singapore for her CD's but to no avail. Even Singaporeans are asking where can they get the CD's and they are doing every means to secure whatever CD's are available. As for me? I had started my re-collection activity by importing one of the many CD's available from CD Japan entitled Vi.Ji.N. and the price is 2800yen!!! That is excluding transportation charges and local taxes!! To make things more expensive, I am expecting myself to be slapped with a 20% import duty and 10% sales tax when this item arrives in Malaysia. The total cost? Rm120.00 per CD...I am bleeding cash right now...

For more info, please visit this site: Yukie Nishimura Well, the site is in Japanese so anyone with knowledge of Chinese and Japanese please do not hesitate to make a visit!