[Interview] High quality and friendly. Saori Hayami's wonderful live concert "Concert Tour 2019 "JUNCTION"" is now on Blu-ray & DVD!

Following the release of her second album "JUNCTION," Saori Hayami held the "Concert Tour 2019 "JUNCTION" in four cities across Japan in April 2019. The final concert, held on April 29 at Tokyo International Forum, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD.
Ms. Hayami is a singer-songwriter who has a reputation for her singing ability and also writes lyrics and music. The 26 songs in this album are full of her charm. We hope you will experience the high quality, soft, and stylish music space that only she can create on film!

This was a live tour with a high degree of freedom, with different ad-libs at each venue!

─ ─ The "JUNCTION" concert tour started in Hiroshima on April 6 and continued to Osaka, Sapporo, and Tokyo on April 29. Looking back, how was it?

Hayami: It was the first tour in about two years, so I was deeply moved. I was really happy to be able to do this tour.

Hayami──Throughout the tour, there was no synchronization with the recorded sound, but only the actual performers on stage, wasn't there?

Hayami: Yes. In Hiroshima, Osaka, and Sapporo, the band consisted of guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums, with strings and chorus added only in Tokyo. So the April 29 concert at the International Forum was both the culmination of the tour and the first day of the tour with that configuration. I think the live show was a combination of the experience we had accumulated on the tour and the excitement of the first day of the tour.

─ ─ The lack of synchronization means that the performance was more unique to that day, wasn't it?

Hayami: That's right. Depending on the mood of the occasion, the tempo of the songs became faster, ballads were sung more slowly than on the CD, and the arrangements of the interludes were different each time. This made the pressure of singing more intense (laughs).

─ ─ What did you put into the set list?

Hayami: Since this was a tour for our 2nd album "JUNCTION," we wanted to play as many songs from the album as possible, but it was very difficult to make a set list since the songs included in the album cover a wide range of genres. I assembled it by writing down all the song titles, including existing songs, in a notebook and listing them, or by making a playlist on my smartphone player and listening to it. In terms of method, I divided the concert into several sections, and thought about what to sing in each section.

Hayami: What exactly do you mean by "sections"?

Hayami: I envisioned a fun and festive start, a little calm down in the middle, a little more excitement, and a big circle at the end. We decided on the stage direction to match the flow of the performance, and depending on the song, we prepared various effects, such as projecting images on a gauze curtain or hanging a number of light bulbs above the piano for the narrators to play.


─ ─ First of all, there was an opening animation of the logo used on the album jacket of "JUNCTION" with moving lines. That was the first thing that excited me.

Hayami: That was cool, wasn't it? I love it too.

─ ─ Also, in terms of visual effects, the "White Room" and "Blessing" in the middle of the film were amazing. Impressive images of rain, clouds, windows, flowers, and the sea played along with the music, creating a fantastic atmosphere.

Hayami: These were two songs with live-action images projected on the screen. The stage director suggested images associated with the songs, and all the staff members discussed and decided on the images. The images were not too specific or abstract, and I think they turned out to be a good balance. Many of the audience members wrote down their impressions of the two songs, which made me think that the visual direction of the show would have a lasting impact.

─ ─ "Blessing" is a song with noisy guitars, which is a genre you have never played before, right?

Hayami: That's right. I added this song as the essence of the album, but I think "Blessing" was completed when I performed it live with the video. I was inside the gauze curtain when I sang it, so it was not until the Blu-ray & DVD that I realized that the audience could see me like this.

Hayami─You mentioned earlier that the middle part of the show is the section where the audience settles down, and this applies to the two songs "White Room" and "Blessing" and the three piano pieces that follow them.

Hayami: I received a lot of feedback from the audience for the piano performance. Including the new song "curtain," there were three songs, which was a number of songs I had never performed at a live concert, so there was a lot of pressure. I can still vividly recall the moment when the band was on stage and no one was there but me and the piano, and when I looked to the right (audience side), there were so many people there, it was a unique atmosphere that made me nervous.

─ ─ "curtain" was a brand new song, wasn't it?

Hayami: Yes. It was born from the concept of completing a song during the tour. The song itself had been written some time before, and when the staff members discussed the possibility of performing something fresh on the tour, we decided to sing that song. However, the lyrics had nothing to do with the live tour, so I decided to write new lyrics based on what I experienced on the tour, and I proposed the idea at the meeting, not knowing how hard it would be afterwards. I sang the lyrics in Hiroshima and Osaka, and at the third concert in Hokkaido, I was going to sing even a part of the lyrics, but I wanted to make sure I had the whole picture, so I ended up singing the lyrics in LaLaLaLa.

Hayami: So you were finally able to perform "curtain" with lyrics in Tokyo.

Hayami: I wrote the song on the theme of "the curtain rising" based on the raw emotions I felt during the three shows. Since the concert was held in April, I thought there were many people who were starting new lives.

Hayami: After that, the band joined us and sang "little forest," followed by a cover of "fly me to the moon.

Hayami: We decided to do a cover song for the tour, and since we were going to be doing this, we wanted to sing a jazzy English song. Fly Me to the Moon" was one of the first songs I practiced when I was little and learning jazz vocals with my mother. I once sang a duet with my mother at a small live house. It is a memorable song for my personal life, and I have sung it as a cover song sung by a character in my work, so I thought that if I were to cover one song, this would be the song.