Magdalena

Magdalena was a band that was formed during a progressive rock boom in Japan. The most characteristic parts of their music were the long guitar and keyboard parts, as well as the strong but at the same time very high-pitched voice of the female singer. Their music contained mostly symphonic ballads, melodious rock songs and pieces that were reminscent of the baroque era.

Magdalena was founded in 1984 in Osaka. At that time many young bands started their career as part of the prog-rock wave, with the most bands coming from either Osaka or Tokyo. Magdalena consisted of Tokuhisa Megumi (vocals), Itô Nobuo (drums), Kashima Youzou (keyboard), Fujii Taku (guitar) and Nishiguchi Chokura (bass). Although being one under a lot of comparable bands, the five members managed to make themselves a name in the scene.

In 1987, their only self-titled album was released and contained some songs with a duration of more than 10 minutes and gave the opportunity for three guest musicians to show off their talent. Miyatake Kazuhiro played flute, while the other two had vocal parts. This work stayed the only memorable release of the band, because less than a year later, Magdalena broke up. An attempt to revive the band in 1991 failed, but brought a new demotape for the fans. In the mid 90's, the indies label Musea started to re-release the prog-rock albums from the 80's including the album from Magdalena. This was mostly likely due to the fact that the band still held a cult-status under the fans of the genre.

Since the disbanding, Megumi sings for Teru's Symphonia, that already existed as a project in the mid 80's, parallel to Magdalena and became an official band when Megumi joined. From time to time she sings in different projects and session bands like for example megu & you & MASA & bon & mo~ri~ Project or Megdalena where Chokura was also part of. What the rest of the band is doing since the break up is unknown, but they appear quite often as guest musicians.