Yasutaka Hemmi – Violin Encounters (2004)

I spent some time trying to figure out the meaning of this highly intruiging cover; are we seeing a Kung Fu jump here or is the artist actually playing his foot, carrying a violin as a decorative asset just to make the picture complete? He bursts into our world like a bemusing apparition from another time-space reality, and we hardly know what it is that all of a sudden intrudes upon our perception. Added to that, the artist’s face appears to be digitally manipulated to resemble those uncanny 3D graphic representations of a human’s facial features; that sense of ünreal-ness is heightened by the blurry spot of light fading out his left eye. Further, the acrobatic position refers to the degree of uneartly virtuosity needed to play the pieces on this compilation, of course.
All in all, this is a cover I can continue to study for hours.
Young violinist Hemmi seems to be involved in visual art as well as in music. That explains.

As for the music, have a look at the tracklist. And beware of the last one by Maierhof. That will seriously help you to understand the cover art. Or perhaps it won't.

Tracks:

01. Brian Ferneyhough - Intermedio alla Ciaccona (1966) [0:08:05.50]
02. Brian Ferneyhough - Unsichtbare Farben (1997-'98) [0:12:02.32]
03. Keiko Harada - Labyrinth X (1997-'99) [0:08:41.00]
04. David Young - Animali from the Val Camonica Pieces (2002) [0:09:10.11]
05. Patrick De Clerck - Al Morti (2001) [0:08:17.60]
06. Luciano Berio - Sequenza VIII (1976) [0:11:21.60]
07. Michael Maierhof - Splitting 5 for violin and CD-player (2000-'01) [0:13:26.45]

Performer:

Yasutaka Hemmi – violin