Dear Shigeki...

I "fell in love" with Bossa Nova at such a young age that I can hardly remember which of the most famous tunes in that genre I heard first, but I'm reasonably sure it was Antonio Carlos Jobim's album on the Verve label titled, "Antonio Carlos Jobim, the Composer of Desafinado, Plays."

Listening to your compositions has convinced me that you are a musical "chameleon" who absorbs everything you've heard, and then, you take what you've listened to and make something very and distinctly your own with it.

Your Bossa Nova composition, "Precious", is just another example of the fruitful results of what I described above. Your instrumental arrangement is a coolly rhythmic and perhaps even danceable piece of Bossa Nova elegance.

Forum member "VideoTrack" made an amazingly insightful comment about Ms. Yoshikawa's singing that I wish I had thought of first: "She holds a conversation with the vocals in this song". Nothing could be more true, Shigeki. Her voice is as clear, as expressive, and as playful as a young girl's, yet at the same time delightfully sensuous. It's the waves above the undercurrent of your luxurious music.

I don't know where her own piano playing began and ended in your track, but wherever it came in, it only added to the jazzy "Brazilian-ness" of your song. Each stanza of the lyrics are like some new kind of musical "haiku."

The late jazz music "critic" Barry Ulanov described the title track of a Dave Brubeck album, "Time In', as "a fine thing, a sweet thing, a twilight thing." Those are deliciously descriptive and evocative words to communicate the essence of the feel of a piece of music, but I couldn't stop them from rising out of my memory as I listened to "Precious." I hope he won't mind that I borrowed them and offered them to you and Ms. Yoshikawa.

Sincerely,

"bluage" (a.k.a. Loren)

"Music is what feelings sound like."-- borrowed from a Cakewalk Music Creator forum member, "Mamabear".