Eternal Fantasy

Kaori Muraji continues to expand the guitar repertoire. The Japanese musician’s elegant artistry, with its singing line and feeling for expressive nuance, is as persuasive in arrangements of movie soundtracks and pop ballads as it is in her instrument’s core classical works. Eternal Fantasy presents an opulent selection of compositions conceived for video games in transformative transcriptions that make convincing concert pieces. Muraji’s lyrical playing is flawless, whether applied to the hypnotic simplicity of “Jigglypuff’s Lullaby” from Pokémon, the Baroque intricacies of her own Eternal Fantasia or the haunting “Zanarkand” from Final Fantasy 10. Her guitarist younger brother, Soichi Muraji, and flautist Cocomi enrich the album as Muraji’s trio partners in “Waltzing in the Rain” from Vincent Diamante’s Sky soundtrack, with Soichi adding pep to a big-boned guitar duo version of Jeremy Soule’s “The Dragonborn Comes” from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.