To hear of a Japanese counter-tenor may come as quite a surprise, but
Yoshikazu Mera proves that he is an accomplished and extremely talented artist with a quality of voice that rivals the other Western counter-tenors such as Vyatcheslav Kagan-Paley and Daniel Taylor, among others. He offers us 21 Japanese folk and pop songs accompanied on the piano on Mother's Songs, all accompaniments being as simple as they can be. Yet, the quality of his voice, his singing, and his musicality are the most enchanting, delicate, and some might even say the most entrancing. What strikes with
Mera is that at first his voice sounds more like a woman or a boy's voice rather than a counter-tenor, as is the case with Kagan-Paley or Taylor. The title of the CD is in fact the most suggestive -- Mother's Songs -- getting the feeling across of young boy singing for his mother.
Yoshikazu Mera is much more than a boy with a nice voice, he has a remarkable mastery of his counter-tenor voice. A name to remember! ~ Bruno Deschênes