Jun Miyake is a self-proclaimed lover of the exotic. Nowhere is this more evident than in his latest composition, the music for a revival of avant-garde playwright Shuji Terayama's 1977 play, "Chugoku no Fushigina Yakunin" ("The Miraculous Mandarin").
In the space of two hours, his exquisite score roams the world, from the opening strains of a traditional Chinese melody to the cacophony of free jazz, through a tender tango, ending in a finale that mingles the carnivalesque decadence of composer Kurt Weill with the grating industrial pulse of band Einsturzende Neubauten. Yes, somehow they have all been fit seamlessly into Miyake's mix.
In some ways the musical odyssey of "The Miraculous Mandarin" resembles Miyake's own wanderlust. He began his journey as a jazz-trumpet player who studied with jazz great Terumasa Hino and at Boston's prestigious Berklee School of Music. An epiphany came after he saw his idol, Miles Davis, in concert in New York in 1981.