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TOKYO TRAVEL SKETCHBOOK, AMAIA ARRAZOLA
Spanish illustrator Amaia Arrazola succeeds in an impossible task in her first book, summing up the entirety of Japanese culture from ancient traditions to 21st-century technology. Of course, she couldn’t cover everything during her month-long residency, but her quirky pictures and brief, often-hilarious notes convey a whirlwind of impressions: a cartoon rendition of Utagawa Hiroshige’s TheFifty-Three StationsoftheTōkaidō gives way to a colorful report on the Kabukicho, Tokyo’s red-light district, which in turn leads to a discussion of the untranslatable concept of ikigai, a lifelong search for a reason for living, encompassing a person’s passion, profession, vocation and mission. She has created a remarkable encapsulation of a timeless city.
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HEAVY WEATHER: WIND CONCERTOS, HARTT WIND ENSEMBLE
Contemporary American composers, with all their angularity and raw expression, are the stars of this Naxos release. Conductor Glen Adsit leads the soaring saxophones of Susan Botti’s “Sull’ala,” the thrumming bassoon and chamber winds of Stephen Michael Gryc’s commediadell’arte - inspired “Guignol,” and the lyrical (would you believe it?) tuba and wind concerto of Jess Turner’s “Heavy Weather” — an effective evocation of a languid, high-pressure heat wave followed by the turbulence and hurtling hail of a supercell thunderstorm. The recording is an emotional voyage in itself.
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BUTZE RAPIDS, PRINCE RUPERT, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
When most people hear “rain forest,” they think of steamy tropical jungles in places like Brazil or Borneo. In British Columbia, the rain forest is something else entirely — cool and stately, with towering evergreens shading fern bracken, aromatic cedars, the “wild bonsai” of stunted shore pine and the tumbling waters of snowmelt streams. At the Butze Rapids Trail, a brisk walk into the rain forest on Kaien Island leads to the spectacular phenomenon of Fern Passage. The whitewater rapids here change direction with the tides. The Tsimshian First Nations named the island “Kaien,” or “foaming waters” after the turbulence on display during peak flows, which can reach more than 20 feet (6 meters) in height.