On April 19 the Chan Centre hosted Ichiko Aoba for the Japanese singer-songwriter’s first concert in Vancouver. Known for her unique combination of sparse folk melodies, virtuosic jazz rhythms and ambient soundscapes, Aoba embarked on her 2025 world tour this February in support of her new LP Luminescent Creatures.
Entering the Chan centre for Aoba’s concert, I was struck by $60 price tags on the shirts at the merch table. Apparently few others found that excessive; as I rounded a corner I was floored by the longest queue for a merch booth that I have ever seen. It snaked through the Chan’s main hall, climbed the mezzanine and folded back around until I couldn’t see the end. All thoughts of swinging by for cheap additions to my sticker collection were dashed then and there.
The Chan Shun Concert Hall, in all accustomed splendour, was set to accommodate Aoba’s quiet acoustic sound. Tiny microphones were strung from the ceiling and clipped on railings, pointed at diverse angles to capture the hall’s famed acoustics. A black curtain curved behind the stage where a hollowbody electric guitar and a violin waited for the night’s opener.
This opening act was Canadian composer and singer-songwriter Owen Pallett, known for their orchestral scores on films like Her and Dream Scenario, as well as their own studio albums and collaborations with Montréal indie-rock band Arcade Fire.
Before Pallett took the stage, Chan Centre Curator-in-Residence Jarrett Martineau gave a land acknowledgement, welcomed the performers and audience to the hall and spoke about the Chan’s upcoming events. These included a concert from Mexican singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade and UBC’s annual Indigenous-led festival ʔəm̓i ce:p xʷiwəl (Come Toward the Fire), both coming up in September.
Pallett’s act featured songs from their recent album Has a Good Home as well as a few new pieces. With their guitar, violin and extensive use of a looper pedal, Pallett layered tracks over and over each other, building simple melodies and rhythms into impressively rich pieces to which they added evocative lyrics and serviceable, if not stunning, vocals. Pallett’s pedal setup also allowed them to apply electronic effects to their tracks that gave welcome variation to their acoustic indie-folk sound.
By their own admission, Pallett was nervous playing at the Chan, and perhaps it was these nerves that led to a few mistakes or off-beat timings, causing some of their complexly layered songs to sound murky when all of the tracks were combined at the climax. When playing music with a looper pedal, even the smallest hiccups in tempo can cause chain reactions that create major problems in the final product. With that in mind, Pallett’s ability to create such intricate songs in a live setting was impressive in spite of a few bumps.
After a short intermission, the audience returned to their seats and Aoba took the stage in a long kimono. The decor laid out for her performance — a black ottoman and a tall lamp, a globe on a stool above her shoulder, a dark wooden guitar stand — were surprisingly evocative in the style of minimalist set design, evoking a Victorian or Meiji era parlour. This aesthetic was furthered by the hall’s lighting setup, which projected intricate leafy shadows on the curtain backstage, shining through a light smoke like sun through a window pane.
Aoba sang in Japanese and French, switching intermittently between piano and classical guitar. While ambient soundscape is an integral part of the folk artist’s distinct sound, there were no backing tracks to complement Aoba’s music — they weren’t needed. Even alone, her voice and playing were enthralling.
Featuring creative, fluent melodies and complex jazz-inspired chords, even Aoba’s slower, more simple pieces like “Endive to Nemutte (Asleep Among Endives)” remained unpredictable yet satisfying, always ready to lead the listener into uncharted waters before bringing them back at the end of the song. Many of her songs, like “Taiyou-san (Mr. Sun),” were quick and lively with rhythms evoking the French Hot Club jazz of Django Reinhardt.
Aoba’s voice, frequently augmented with a generous reverb effect, soared and danced, sometimes seeming like an extension of her guitar or piano, others like an instrument all to itself.
Humming and whistling to herself between songs, Aoba seemed completely at home on stage, complementing the venue and thanking the audience for coming out. Working through limited English, she prefaced one song, “Uta no Kehai (Glimpse of a Song),” with a story about her friends whose breakup inspired the lyrics, miming splitting up and getting back together with her fingers.
In an encore following a standing ovation during which one front-row fan handed her a bundle of yellow roses, Aoba returned to the stage and played, appropriately enough, her song “Bouquet.” She proceeded to remove the microphone from her guitar and push the vocal mic aside before giving a fully acoustic performance of an unreleased song.
Ichiko Aoba is the kind of act the Chan Centre was built for, and her final piece put that on full display in a truly remarkable performance that held the audience rapt, hanging on every note.
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