“…a whirlwind aural experience.”
—SF Weekly
“…an unusual beast – a kind of musical chimera, hard to classify yet fascinating as a result…..One of the most striking features of the album is its virtuosity…anything but a typical album – it is a window onto a personal philosophy, a musical and pictorial game, a strange beast from a planet at the edge of the shakuhachi’s expanding sonic and cultural universe.”
–Joe Browning, European Shakuhachi Society Journal
Shakuhachi Unleashed
Vol. I, Holy Flute – May 12, 2017
Vol. II, Bamboo Rising – April 7, 2018
Vol. III, Sacred Root – early 2019
Cornelius Boots: concept, composer, transcriber, arranged, performer, producer
“This is one of the most ambitious solo woodwind projects ever. I am splitting the atom of music itself–with only the body, air and a bamboo tube. continues and concludes with Volume III–Sacred Root: Kung Fu Flute & Buddhist Blues. It includes original compositions alongside kung fu movie music from Bruce Lee and David Carradine films, actual blues songs from Elmore James and Junior Kimbrough, some Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Primus, Fishbone and more. All meticulously crafted and performed on one of the rarest and most difficult wind instruments: Japanese shakuhachi, the solo, root-end bamboo, earthy flute of Zen Buddhism.”
Solo Classic Rock Shakuhachi. Virtuosic Nature Hymns and Anthems. A completely unique style of advanced, expressive woodwind performance that can be called rustic classical or bamboo gospel. Featuring new, original compositions and advanced arrangements of Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Roky Erickson, Dio, Black Sabbath and more, all played on the unadorned, 5-hole, no mouthpiece, 100% bamboo (jinashi) shakuhachi—the robust woodwind of Zen Buddhism—and its baritone brother, Taimu. After Holy Flute, Bamboo Rising is the second album in the Shakuhachi Unleashed album trilogy.
About the Shakuhachi Unleashed Trilogy
Shakuhachi Unleashed: Virtuosic revelations for solo shakuhachi and Taimu
June 2, 2016. Opening Night Concert, International Shakuhachi Festival Prague.
Awakening the deepest soul of shakuhachi, honoring and evolving the solo classical Zen Buddhist honkyoku tradition rooted in aliveness, awareness and nature. A 21st century woodwind performance style drawing on rock, blues, metal, Zen and pure energy. This robust bamboo woodwind/flute is known for being evocative and provocative, ethereal, and very difficult to play. The breadth of its breath-powered musicality is brought to you in each of the Shakuhachi Unleashed installments. Each album combines the energy and structure of carefully chosen songs–originals and “cover song” arrangements (rock, metal, blues, and more)–with the inspiring, one-of-a-kind sounds of the shakuhachi and its baritone brother, Taimu.
I am trained in, licensed in and have a deep abiding respect for the central position of honkyoku within the sphere of what solo shakuhachi has been, what it is, and what it shall be on into the future: as a composer, performer and teacher I genuinely look forward to exploring this repertoire for the rest of my breathing time on Earth. However, given that I discovered shakuhachi already deep into my path as a pioneering, polystylistic, high-energy, highly-trained, genre-bending, membrane-stretching woodwind composer-performer–it was almost inevitable that I would not be able to resist diving into some sort of deep and uncharted waters with the bamboos at my side. And so we find ourselves at an outpost called “Shakuhachi Unleashed”, the first volume of which, Holy Flute, has already been called “about the strangest thing I have ever heard in my life” (Glacially Musical, April 24, 2017) and “a kind of musical chimera…a strange beast from a planet at the edge of the shakuhachi’s expanding sonic and cultural universe” (European Shakuhachi Society Journal, 2017-Volume 1) and the second volume of which is in-production at this moment (October 2017).
The common elements are: emotional content (see Bruce Lee’s training scene in Return of the Dragon), soul-based performance, and a commitment to full-blooded collaboration with the jinashi bamboo itself. Beyond all of these colliding stylistic elements already described, we get to explore so many moods, textures, flavors and topics: nature hymns and anthems, theological melodrama, metaphysical illumination, kung fu flute, Buddhist Blues, and beyond.