Musicians Network Home Page

Musicians Network News




BBC PHILHARMONIC JAPAN TOUR REPORT

Published on 19th March, 2011 at 7:20am by Richard Williamson.

Here's a dramatic personal account of the recent BBC Phil tour to Japan by Phill Stoker

Here's a first hand account of the BBC Philharmonic's recent tour to Japan by MN member Phill Stoker....

It only takes a couple of days to settle back into the routine of home, a wonderful wife, three boys, three hens and four fish but this time one week ago I was on a coach on the way to a BBC Philharmonic gig in Yokohama, travelling on the Yokohama Bay Bridge, when Japan suffered it's biggest ever earthquake. It was my fourth visit to that amazing country but this was going to be one to remember. We were five concerts down with five to go on the most slick and harmonious tour I'd been on for ages. There was a real expectation about the trip , all our concerts had sold out months before, mostly because of the combination of a hugely popular, and gifted, Japanese soloist, Nobuyuki Tsujii, and our conductor for the trip Sado Yutaka. We had tried out the programmes in advance on UK audiences and they'd gone down a storm. So far so good.

At first we thought that the coach was slowing down because we had a blown tyre because it started to sway from side to side. We came to a stop as we had just joined the bridge. The swaying became more insistent and picked up momentum and we realised that we were probably experiencing an earthquake. I've seen the disaster movies where the next step was the pinging of the steel supports that hold up the bridge and imagined the coach tumbling into the sea a couple of hundred feet below. After about three minutes it subsided. Two lanes were now blocked by a digger that had fallen off its transport so the coach crawled along the bridge towards the relative safety on the other side. We didn't make it off before we had experienced another tremor, as strong as the first.

Here's a video taken by one of the BBC Phil members whilst on the coach!

Throughout it all I prayed for safety and my companions remained mostly calm. The usual tour humour broke the tension, someone tidying his bag on his seat because he said he wanted to go tidily, another hoped the hotel was fine because he had a couple of beers in the fridge! Although we had live TV on the bus it wasn't apparent to anyone just how much devastation was to come with the tsunami. So much so we even had a seating call on our arrival at the venue! When the situation started to emerge our concert was cancelled and after the entire orchestra descended on the only open shop for supplies, we got back on our coaches to start the 20 mile trip back to our hotel in Tokyo. Nine hours later, such was the traffic chaos due to the closing of the public transport system, the coach was within walking distance from the hotel and we abandoned it and our driver and walked the last forty minutes in the cold night air. We arrived back around 4am. By the miracle that is Skype I was able to see everyone at home and assure them that we were all fine, to the accompaniment of the creaking and swaying hotel, from my room on the 31st floor. It was the first of many aftershocks over the next few days.

The next two concerts were cancelled due to the venues requiring safety checks following the quake and when it became apparent that the situation in Japan was much more serious than imagined we were told that we were being flown home without playing another note. We had a touching meeting in the hotel lobby with management, conductor and soloist on the Sunday morning. Mr Yutaka summed up the situation well when he said the now the people of Japan needed aid, electricity, food and shelter, but later they would need music, and when that time came we were invited back to perform the cancelled concerts.

Here's an amazing interview on the BBC by 2 of BBC Phil's viola players about the earthquake

Good decisions were taken by management to ensure our safety and an exit strategy from the country that involved flights to Osaka, then onward via a variety of routes back home.

It was quite an experience. I was really encouraged by the many messages from people at home praying for us and our safety. I am really thankful to belong to an organisation which went to great lengths to get us all home. I think that going through such an experience with colleagues will prove a catalyst for even closer bonds of friendship and a sharing between us all. Most of all, although the local media has made much of the story of an orchestra caught up in Japan during the earthquake, our anxious days were such a small thing compared to the devastation brought to the coastal communities further up the coast by the tsunami and with the continuing nuclear crisis.

Here's an interview with another MN member, Helena Nolan, who was also on the tour.

And here's a BBC report as some of the musicians arrived back in Manchester.

As a postscript, we found out today that our instruments were being held on arrival in the UK because the trunkers had measured a higher than usual radioactive reading. They think it might just be particles on the wrapping of the boxes and need to wait until it can be disposed of appropriately. We could be missing a few more concerts at this rate.

Related Links:



Published on Saturday, 19th March, 2011 at 07:20 by Richard Williamson, with the following tags:
bbc, philharmonic, japan, earthquake.



Share this post using…