Taro is an extraordinary solo violinist whose music is not confined to standard classical boundaries. He has a much wider crossover fan base than most traditional classical musicians. Respected as one of the most talented contemporary Japanese violinists and composers, his artistic abilities reach far beyond music.
Taro was born on 23rd January, 1968. Picking up his first violin at the age of four, he debuted as a member of the band Kryzler & Kompany — a trio of violin, bass and keyboards — in 1990 whilst studying the violin at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, one of the most prestigious art universities in Japan.
In 1996, he recorded “To Love You More” with Céline Dion, which went on to become a No.1 hit, selling over a million records and receiving an award for top foreign single of year. Between 1996-97 he performed in over 100 concerts worldwide as the special guest on Céline Dion’s world tour and after 11 albums with Kryzler & Kompany, he made his solo debut in 1997.
He has recorded his own compositions with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. His unique sound and collaborations with artists such the Polish jazz singer Basia and Argentinean Forever Tango Orchestra have gained him massive crossover appeal.
In 2007, he recorded a track for “We All Love Ennio Morricone” an all-star tribute album honouring Oscar-winning composer Ennio Morricone. The line-up included artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Andrea Bocelli, and Quincy Jones. Taro has released a total of 15 solo albums through his own label, HATS Records and has composed the soundtrack to numerous movies and commercials. He has also written music for various companies, many of which have supported his activities, including ANA (All Nippon Airlines), Shinsei Bank, Kinoshita construction, and Asahi Beer.
Taro moved to London with his family in September 2007 with the ambition to extend his career as a classical violinist. For the last ten years he has performed over 100 concerts every year, these concerts were typically held in halls with capacities of up to 5000 and tickets were known to sell out on the first day of sale.
Having sold over 5 million CDs in Japan he believes that now is the right time for him to make his mark in Europe, particularly in the UK. Taro’s dynamic performances, his sound and skill are often compared to that of Itzhak Perlman, a childhood hero. He is sure to captivate his audience not only in the UK, but everywhere in the world.
There are no musical boundaries — only good music and bad music.
I have admired Brahms more than any other composer for as long as I can remember. My life has been touched by so much beautiful music, yet if I were to be stranded on a deserted island with only one piece of music to keep me company, I would without hesitiation choose Brahms Sonata in D minor, Op. 108.
Born on 2nd September, 1982 in Krosno, Poland, Maciej Janas grew up in a musical family with his father, an accordion teacher, his mother, a violin teacher, and two sisters, both violinists. The three siblings frequented the music school of their parents, where violins and other instruments sang lullabies to the young children. As Maciej recalls, music was everywhere.
He began teaching himself the piano in 1987, when he was just five. He had absolute pitch already. He entered numerous competitions in the following years and had much success, entering the famous Academy of Music in Krakow in 1990, aged 18.
In 2006, Taro visited Poland, the sacred land of F. Chopin, and met Maciej at the Chopin Academy of Music. It was a fateful encounter. Impressed by his technique, Taro promised to take Maciej on tour with him. Reunited in Japan later that year, Maciej joined Taro on his tour straightaway. Having enchanted Taro with his sound and technique, Maciej is sure to be capturing more hearts with his piano playing in the future. He currently resides in London.
Wearing a striped suit accessorized with a bright handkerchief, Taro Hakase beams with happiness from underneath his trademark bouffant. This interview took place in an empty room with white walls, yet the soft-spoken Taro immediately fills the air with colourful delight. Like his music, he radiates.
In 1990, still a student at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Taro debut with his band, Kryzler & Kompany. A trio of violin, bass, and keyboards, they arranged classical pieces in a popular tone and gave dazzling performances with bright costumes and even a little dancing. It was groundbreaking at the time.
“People couldn’t categorize our music into any genre. What I found interesting was being told that in no other country in the world do you hear the sound of the violin on TV as often as in Japan. I felt proud that my career had contributed to creating something new.”
The point was, says Taro, “to see if the violin can have mass appeal. In Japan, the violin had a classical, academic image and was performed mainly in concert halls where applause was frowned upon. But in Europe, buskers roam the streets with violins in hand. It also has a place in folk music which lends it a different face. So I’ve always felt that the violin is a much friendlier instrument than people think, and have tried to teach people that.” Taro himself studied classical music academically at university, so why and when did his desire to rid the violin of this image come to surface?
“I was 18 or 19 years old when I became interested in the world outside classical music. Since I began playing the violin at the age of four, I had spent every spare penny on classical albums, conducting to the music coming through my headphones.” This obsession was met with a shock, however, when he started university. “I discovered rock.”
You would expect the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music to be a hub for purely classical music, but apparently, this was not the case. “If I had gone to any other music university, my life may have turned out very differently.” The university’s diverse range of art forms made all the difference.
“The painters or sculptors in fine arts would only listen to hardcore music. Basically, it was the Stones, Bob Marley, or the Sex Pistols. Everything else didn’t count. Hanging out with them, I was inspired by their energy to ‘create’. For example, with the violin, I was lost without the scores of Bach or Beethoven. But for them, clay, wood or canvas – that was what they were. I felt frustrated, and so I decided to create myself.”
Which is where Taro’s life began to take off. He gets together a band, and begins to write music. Taking a crash course in punk, the Beatles and Elvis, he shifted his goals from “winning the Tchaikovsky competition to entering the pop charts”. In order to achieve this, Taro took on a range of unclassical jobs.
“I had various jobs in theatre before landing a gig with the Shiki Theatre Company. That lasted two or three years. My primary thought was to stand out, but seeing as the orchestra is hidden away in the pit, that wasn’t going to happen. So I decided to stand on my chair for the violin phrases. The actors took a liking to me, and eventually word spread that there’s a crazy guy on the violin. I started getting jobs as a session musician. I did everything, just to get noticed in any way possible,” he says laughingly.
One day, as Taro was playing a teatime concert in a small cafe with his band of violin, synthesizer, and bass, they were spotted by a music producer, and Kryzler & Kompany was born. Playing an average of 100 concerts per year in its heyday, Taro remembers learning about “the importance of the audience and the power they have”. Repertoire, performance, and showmanship – this is where Taro’s flair for communication and his concert style was developed, and they have charmed audiences ever since.
Kryzler & Kompany broke up in 1996, six years after its debut, and Taro’s life took another turn. Taro recorded the song “To Love You More” with the world renowned songstress, Céline Dion, and the song was a big hit. Taro spent the next three years touring the world with Dion, playing in over 100 concerts. “I would come on stage as the special guest for just one song. A five minute job,” he laughs. “We travelled around America for three months and then covered the whole of Europe. And out of all the cities, I was drawn to London in particular.”
Taro returned to London between 1998 and 1999, this time for two months of recording. And that was when he really fell in love. 10 years later, in September last year, his wish was finally granted and he relocated to London with his family. A few months in to life in west London, has the city lived up to its promises?
“Well, everyone says how inconvenient it is here compared to Japan, and it may be true. But for our generation, it’s basically as convenient as it was in our childhood. When I was a teenager, we thought, keep working and one day the room will have air conditioning! Keep working and there’ll be hot water! Our wishes were simple. Students in Tokyo nowadays take it all for granted. So it’s not for me to decide whether Japan’s convenience is a good thing or not, but when it comes to whether I like it or not, well, I guess I don’t anymore. I’m looking to “restart” myself, so I’d say a certain amount of inconvenience is just about right.”
Taro describes his life in London as a “restart”. This is reflected in the programme for his debut concert in London planned for March. Händel, Beethoven, Brahms – famous sonatas of these great composers are lined up back to back. What lead to this change in direction for someone who added the pop to classical music? “For me, it’s a challenge. And if I’m going to take on a challenge, it can’t be some lukewarm repertoire; it’s got to come from the very top. The program is actually based on the repertoire of a recital by Itzhak Perlman that I admired greatly as a child. Perlman was a hero to me. I first heard him when I was nine years old and he’s been my favourite violinist ever since. Although the popular music I play is miles away from classical music, Perlman’s performances are still what I base myself on. Looking for a starting point for my reinvention as a classical musician, I couldn’t find anywhere better than here. At the very top. It’s not easy though.” His fresh face and voice, however, reveal no sign of hardship. Having experienced a wide range of genres, perhaps he is now realizing that classical music, where his music career began, runs through the very core of him. You can feel the deep love Taro feels towards it from the way he deliberately chooses famous works familiar even beyond classical music fans and courageously takes them on.
“One thing I really hate about many classical concerts is how some musicians present you some minor works, as if the audience would be a critic. They are not, and there is no point in listening to music that isn’t well known. Take Beethoven, for example. Out of his ten Page 12 sonatas, I think that only two work as concert pieces – no. 5 and no. 9. The others are not suited to being performed in concerts. If you look at it like that, there aren’t many violin sonatas to choose from. And then there are those masterpieces that absolutely must be passed on to the next generation. So in the end, these make it into the programme.”
Taro is practising furiously now. His own compositions last around five minutes, and his concerts would typically feature him speaking in between a few songs. So performing grand works that can be up to thirty minutes long is “completely different”, but it is also “incredibly interesting. I still don’t think it’s the friendliest way of presenting music, making people listen for thirty minutes without even clapping. But it is so emotionally powerful, it’s just not possible to experience that level of emotion any other way. I think back to my childhood and to the joy I felt when listening to Perlman perform in the concerts I followed so obsessively. That is what inspires me.”
“The past fifty years has seen violinists concentrate purely on classical music, but until around the time of Jascha Heifetz and Fritz Kreisler, violinists were often composers too, even arranging compositions and performing them at concerts. Classical and popular music wasn’t quite as clear cut as it is now, nor was it just about perfecting technique. Violinists gave up composing and arranging in the space of just fifty years. But it’s natural to want to write if you play. We can learn from popular music and do as Kreisler used to do in the classical field.”
The inspiration behind the name of Taro’s band, Kryzler & Kompany, Fritz Kreisler was a world renowned violinist and composer. However, at the time, Kreisler pretended that his own compositions were pieces he had discovered and arranged originating from the Baroque period, attributing them to other composers, earning himself a reputation for being incredibly diligent in his study of music. Thirty years later as he was reaching the peak of his career, he revealed his secret to the dismay of critics. Taro takes this lightly, laughing as he says, “He had a lot of wit and I admire him for that,” but behind his words seems to be a resolution for his own future as a violinist and composer.
“These pieces are now an important part of our repertoire. I would be happy if the next generation would perform my own compositions in a variety of styles. Writing music is not just for yourself, it is adding to the pool of repertoire for everyone to perform. Classical music has inadvertently become separated from entertainment. I’m here to fill the gap.”
“There is nothing more enjoyable than music”
Accompanying Taro to this interview is the actress, and Taro’s wife, Mayuko Takada, who also happens to be his music’s number one supporter.
“His dynamic performances have a natural gift to embrace people’s hearts. His concerts have never failed to entertain the audience, who go home saying, ‘I really enjoyed that, I’d like to go again’,” she says, “So I don’t think that anything has to change just because the music is classical. The enjoyment of music is fundamental to people.”
And it’s true that when Taro plays the violin, he looks truly happy. His declaration that to play the violin “is the most enjoyable thing in the world” has the whole room laughing with warm envy.
“It is great, great fun. You can reincarnate me as many times as you like, I would still be playing the violin. There is nothing in the world that is better.” His words and his love for music are so pure, it can almost make you blush. In any genre that he decides to take on, it is clear that his enjoyment of and passion for music will always remain with him and continue to be his driving force.
Taro has two children, Himari, eight years old and Mantaro, one and a half. So will Taro’s two children be following in their father’s footsteps? Their future is in their own hands, he says, but then adds, “When you make music, it is always with you. It is inside you, even as we speak now, or when we sleep. This is something I want to pass on to them.” Taro’s passionate love for music is lighting the torch for the next generation.