(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
When Stomu Yamashta was revealed to Western audiences, he was already an enfant prodige of percussion: only twenty-seven years old (born in 1945), he already had behind him a highly respectable career among avant-garde ensembles, free-jazz groups, and even symphony orchestras.
An impressive number of modern composers had written music for him. A graduate in composition from Kyoto and Boston, he nevertheless failed to highlight his own creative gifts, preferring instead to capitalize on the myth of the monstrous percussionist and on his ethnic origins.
Having moved to United Kingdom, he attempted a more rock-oriented career with an ad hoc group, Come To The Edge, documented on Floating Music (1972), but achieved more brilliant results with the Red Buddha Theatre, an Anglo-Japanese musical-theater collective that debuted with the opera The Man From The East (other performances would later be collected on Raindog). Yamashta intensified his inclination toward jazz-rock with East Wind (featuring Hugh Hopper, Gary Boyle and Brian Gascoigne), who recorded Freedom Is Frightening and One By One.
He continued to distinguish himself as the ideologue of supergroups when he formed Go, which included Klaus Schulze on electronic keyboards, Steve Winwood on organ, Michael Shrieve of Santana on percussion, and Al Di Meola on guitars. Parallel to this exotic jazz-rock (very pretentious but not very engaging), Yamashta pursued an activity as a relentless experimenter, equally contrived.
Yet Yamashta's most sincere career was perhaps that of Iroha, his new-age alter ego, working with electronic keyboards, Tibetan chant and natural sounds, along the path sketched out, though not always pursued, by pieces such as Space Theme, Space Requiem and Space Song (from Go).
Easier and more sentimental, but also more mature, Sea And Sky, a symphonic-electronic poem arranged by Paul Buckmaster for synthesizer, percussion and orchestra, would perhaps constitute the peak of his career.
Sunrise From West Sea documents live performances of April 1971 with his project Horizon: Masahiko Satoh (electric organ), Taj Mahal Travellers Takehisa Kosugi (electric violin) and Hideakira Sakurai (electric koto, shamisen and percussion).
