Toshinori Kondo is an Japanese avant-garde jazz and jazz fusion trumpeter. In 1978 he moved to New York, and began performing with Bill Laswell, John Zorn, Fred Frith, and Eraldo Bernocchi. He toured in Europe with Eugene Chadbourne, and collaborated with European musicians such as Peter Brotzman. Returning to Japan, he worked with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kazumi Watanabe, and Herbie Hancock. In the mid-1980s he began focusing on his own career, blending his avant-garde origins with electronic music.
Blow the earth in Japan was his first project as a film director. The movie is a trip where the improvisation music by Toshinori Kondo resonated with the nature of the colorful four seasons in Japan. At march 11 Kondo performed Blow the Earth in Naraha at 20 km from Fukushima, center of the nuclear disaster in March 2011.
An impression of the performance is documented by Kou Kikuchi and can be watched at Vimeo. Watch and listen how the solitude sounds of the trumpet blends with wide emptiness of the landcape.
