On their third duo recording, John Butcher (sax and feedback) and Rhodri Davies (concert and electric harp) take their musical journey a step further. This is music in which sounds have their own value and character. Tones happen, not in a premeditated and conceived way, but as an intuitive generation of sonic colors and timbres, coming from within the artist, or in dialogue with the other tones emanating from the other instrument. There is no hurry. Just slow sonic merging and embracing. Shimmering, oscillating, resonating, quivering vibrations of air waves, immaterial and ethereal, yet somehow touching a deep nerve. It is hard to understand how so much can be created with so few notes, and most miraculously, how disciplined the interaction is, maintaining the sparse but constantly evolving sounds within the same level of trembling fragility without disrupting it, and even if at times a voice is raised, it adds contrast rather than conflict.
The title of the second track, "Lithopanie" (sic), reflects the sound, as it is the word for very thin and translucent porcelain that is created as a kind of relief sculpture in three dimensions. You can only see the depicted image by shining a light through the porcelain. Literally it means 'light in stone'. And that's how the music is: paper-thin solidity, an apt paradox.
The explanation of the inexplainable sounds are to be found in the breaking of each instrument's boundaries, and literally physically interacting to create something new - 'merging their physical, acoustic and electrical possibilities. In places, the harp is played by air, the saxophone by physical impact; the harp acts as a resonator for saxophone controlled feedback; the saxophone acts as a filter of the embedded electric harp speaker.'
The recording was originally done for 'A l’Improviste' on Radio France, and broadcasted on the 8th June 2015. That by itself is amazing, that public radio has the level of culture to give airtime to these masters. And it is even better than we can all benefit from it now. The vinyl is pressed in only 300 copies, but it is also available digitally.
Ten years later Carliol, dissolved their instruments' boundaries - merging their physical, acoustic and electrical possibilities. In places, the harp is played by air, the saxophone by physical impact; the harp acts as a resonator for saxophone controlled feedback; the saxophone acts as a filter of the embedded electric harp speaker.
Routing Lynn, from 2014, is a live duo performance interacting with 4 channel open air recordings made in Northumberland with Chris Watson.
This was another difficult release to write about because (again) it’s a
departure from what I’ve come to expect from a sax/drums duo (though that
is rapidly changing, much to my enjoyment). It’s much more readily
comparable to another recent Relative Pitch release, the exceptional “Bind the Hand(s) That Feed
”, than it is to say “Interstellar Space”. Like the former release, the
traditional mechanisms of saxophone and drums are abandoned for something
weirder, less immediately identifiable and/or palatable, but a heck of a
lot more interesting to listen to (for a 2019 release, and for my money). Franco-Lebanese alto saxophonist Christine Abdelnour (née
Sehnaoui
) has been
vocal
about her love/hate relationship with her saxophone. Though her initial
inspirations included the playing of John Butcher, Peter Brötzmann, and
Evan Parker she’s stated that recently her playing is more inspired by
electro-acoustic or purely electronic music (a trend I’ve noticed more and
more within the free improvisation world), which rings true in her playing.
It’s more about texture and dynamics than rhythm and melody, and more-so,
in that it’s fairly far removed from the free jazz idiom (which is more
in-line with true free improvisation as defined in Mr. Bailey’s book, in
any case). She is mainly a solo performer and in that context you can truly
hear her uncanny control over her breath and her instrument, as well as her
acute awareness of how she’s interacting acoustically with the performance
space. Lots of free saxophone players experiment with extended techniques
with varying degrees of success, but she takes it to another level
entirely. She credits much of her development to her time playing in
workshops and orchestras organized by Instants Chavires in Paris.
Since then she’s played with numerous artists such as guitarist Andy Moor,
composer/multi-instrumentalist
Michel Waisvisz
, and pianist
Magda Mayas
to site a few diverse examples. Corsano, as our readers know,
gets around
. A savant in extended technique himself, this partnership with Abdelnour
finds him particularly adventurous as he mixes in a healthy dose of his
highly creative drumming with pure noise art, joining Abdelnour in
producing several trebly, jagged sound sculptures.
The first piece is called “Opening Umbrellas Indoors” and finds the duo
summoning all kinds of interesting sounds from their acoustic instruments.
Some instances of subjective pareidolia I heard are wind-up toys,
industrial steam lines, saliva expressions, grima, chimes, hissing, bowed
metal, flute, rattles, creaks, pops, etc. The second piece, “Sparrow’s Tea”
really works over the tweeters. Here we get high pitch bowed metal squeal
from Corsano as Abdelnour subjugates the altissimo register with circular
breathing and a fiery Zorn-like aggression. “Sitting Still While the House
Next Door Burns” is more dynamically colorful. It traverses from a
trembling drone on through a multiphonic phantasmagoria and into a rolling
cascade of rhythm and squelch before again receding like an alien tide. In
“Below the Hull” Corsano is back to his bowed cymbal dissonance while
Abdelnour operates somewhere between breathy multiphonics and the kinds of
sounds I make getting at the last drop of an overpriced drink in a
restaurant with a no-free-refills policy. On “The Mended Lid” the pair
carries on an extended conversation in a choppy Cetacean vernacular that is
spry upfront, but slows to a leisurely pace. On “Sixth Hinge” Abedelnour
honks and squeals around Corsanos resourceful, trundling aggregate. “Old
Tales” is a prime example of the utility of Corsano’s drumming, finding him
perfectly matching the seams of Abdelnour’s growling jigsaw puzzle piece
with a heaping dose of bowed thrum and grit. On “Every Extra Thing” the duo
opens up a bit and Corsano’s undulating and airy percussion is a welcome
sound after the maelstrom of the preceding tracks. Abdelnour slashes at
this soft bedding of rhythm with a complex timbre that growls and flutters.
“Omit the Ninth Row” concludes the album with something that sounds like
two mutant birds conversing at a railyard (again, a bit of subjectivity on
my part). Minimal variation until the last couple of minutes, when it
becomes even sparer, as if the birds have given up and patter away in
grievant self-soliloquy.
All-in-all the concepts exhibited here are work well and I really enjoyed
the record. It has to be stated though, that I enjoy this type of
experimentation and challenging listening. If your ears can’t deal with,
say Parker’s Monoceros (this album is not Monoceros but it wears similar
pants), then you probably won’t find this any more charming. The thing I
enjoyed the most was just the sheer timbral inventiveness of the duo. There
are textures here that (again, if you’re into this sort of thing) are
seriously satisfying to listen to. One critical note is that a few of the
pieces are built off a single concept and vary slightly only in dynamics.
They could’ve done with a bit more variety and/or been allowed to develop
further. But since these are working musicians we’re talking about here
(and professional free improvisers none-the-less) there were undoubtedly
restrictions in time and circumstance at play. Let’s hope they continue
this collaboration and perhaps pull even more like-minded musicians into
the fracas.
Quand Fond La Neige, Où Va Le Blanc? preview on Youtube:
Three solo albums of double bass players: American, Damon Smith; Danish, Nild Bo Daviden; and Greek, George Kokkinakis. All have distinct vision about
their aesthetics, the importance of the art of the moment, its relations to
other arts and the role of the artist in our times.
Damon Smith - Winter Solos for Robert Ryman (Balance Point Acoustics, 2019)
****
It was a snowy day when Smith was on his way to a concert at Cafe Fixe in
Brookline, Massachusetts, and was thinking about minimalist, conceptual painter
Robert Ryman, who has just passed away (February 8, 2019). Ryman intended
to become a jazz saxophonist and even took lessons with Lennie Tristano
before dedicating himself to painting. Smith read before the concert a
catalogue on Ryman, aptly titled Variations + Improvisations, where Ryman
talks about his music: "I wanted to compose: to compose with my
instrument, to find all the things you can do with the instrument. In that
respect it's related to painting."
Smith decided it was about time to find out all the things he can do with
the double bass, “something definitive, an overview of my work as it
stands.” Strangely enough, despite being an avid collection of most
available solo bass recordings and having recorded duets with innovative,
masters of the double bass as Bertram Turetzky and Peter Kowald plus a
quartet with Joëlle Léandre, Smith had felt no urge to record a solo album.
This solo recording - released on a cassette and lasting only 29 minutes
long - his his debut solo project, “a good place to start” as he calls it.
Smith begins the set with powerful demonstration of his extended bowing
techniques “Surface Veil”, offering nuanced layers of resonating tones and
overtones. The following “Reference” changes the atmosphere completely to a
contemplative exploration of the dark and deep tones of the bass. Smith
lets these tones float in their own pace and weaves these effective voices
into a suggestive, dramatic story. “Cord” emphasizes the richness of his vocabulary by just allowing the bass strings and its wooden body of the
bass be and wander wherever they desire while flirting with impossible
percussive architectures, nonsensical melodies but with painful memories.
The last “Attendant” is the most emotional piece here, a surprisingly
melodic love poem to the double bass, all double basses in all their
shapes, sizes and characters, and especially for all solo double bass
albums.
Nils Bo Davidsen - Hverdagsforvandling (Ilk Music, 2019) ****
Hverdagsforvandling (roughly translated from Danish as everyday
transformation) is already the fourth solo album from Nils Bo
Davidsen, one of the most experienced bass players of the Danish scene. However, unlike his previous solo double bass albums, this one focuses on the cello. But
just like Smith, Davidsen aims at transforming the solo sonic
experience into an expansive, multi-layered experience that corresponds
with moving images, as suggested by the cover art of Marek Lubner.
Hverdagsforvandling is a collection of compositions and soundscapes that
are based on improvised, random ideas that were recorded every day since
2015, later developed in a manner that Davidsen insists he could never
composed “by sitting down with my pen and paper”. He structured out of
these random, raw ideas solo fantasies, collages and elaborate,
multi-layered soundscapes.
His tone of the cello - a lone cello or collage of few cellos - is quite
close to the range of the double bass, very deep, dark and highly resonant.
His layered soundscapes (sometimes with the addition of a piano) like
“Yderdøre”, “Mørkhøj”, where four celli sounds as talking-singing to each
other, the choir of 83 celli of “Bindevæv” or the more simple, the touching
the hymn-like “I Solen Ved Kirken”sound as vivid and nuanced cinematic
stories. Solo cello pieces like “I Forbifarten”, “Solæg” or “I Underfladen”
radiate fragile, emotional messages.
Davidsen suggests that such repetitive, daily routines can be transformed
our times “into a three-dimensional, colourful experience.” Sound advice.
George Kokkinaris - 8 improvised stories for solo double bass (s/r, 2019) ***1/2
Athens-based Kokkinakis studied the classical methods of playing the double
bass but aims at exploring the instrument’s sonic range and unique
qualities together with elements of speech, acting and movements, This is
his debut solo album, spontaneously improvised in a three hours session
from December 2017 that yielded 25 pieces. Later, eight of which were
chosen, all with no overdubs, no amplification and no preparations.
Kokkinaris frames his aesthetics in political terms. His liner notes
emphasizes the importance of risk-taking, especially in the current era
that numbs all signs of individuality and creativity into superficial,
collective thinking, often triggered by fear-mongering politics. These
times require the emotional intelligence of artists that are gifted with
direct contact with our world. Free improvisation is one of the best
methods to foster such direct and creative relationship with our world,
charging it with much needed, healthy doses of invigorating freedom.
Kokkinaris sees his improvisations as means of connecting with himself and
others. Each of the eight pieces offers an insight into his own language,
syntax and vocabulary of the bull fiddle and its countless stories.
“Postponed Friendship” investigates the dark, highly resonating timbres of
the bass with careful bow work. “Radio Reed Contact” sketches nervous,
provocative noises with extended bowing techniques. The following “Nekiya”
methodically structures rhythmic patterns from sparse sounds. The poetic
“Fish Eating The Anchor” plays with delicate ripples of overtones while
“Vain Quest Loop” suggests an enigmatic, cinematic narrative, spiced with
exotic percussive sounds and tortured bowing. “Flies with Cinnamon”
combines stream of consciousness chants, transformed into tense, repetitive
acts of bowing. “Amber Formations” demonstrates the orchestral qualities of
the bass, filling the room with its powerful, dramatic presence and deep
voices. The last “Body & Mouth Pleasures” is the most playful and
rhythmic piece here, summarizing all the pleasures the Kokkinaris produces
from his beloved instrument.
By Stef
Of all the leading saxophones of today's jazz, people will think naturally about Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, but Simon Rose should be on this list too, not because of his influence or renown, but simply because of the quality of his playing. His baritone has this wonderful warm, round and deeply emotional sound, that is equally intense when playing with power or quietly. And apart from his tone, he is a true creative artist, a writer of sonic stories that capture the attention and don't let it go.
Both albums show a different face of Simon Rose and his art. The first one is epic and grand, the second is poetic and intimate, and both are of very high quality, and easy to recommend. Simon Rose & Steve Noble - North Sea Night (Not Two, 2019) ****½
On North Sea Night, we get a duo performance with his compatriot Steve Noble, recorded in 2018 at the Jazz North East festival in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Both musicians have performed and released albums together over the years, in various line-ups, including in the trio Badlands with Simon Fell on bass, and their collaboration is almost symbiotic, to use a cliché.
The first track is half an hour long, and it is actually massive, even if performed by only two musicians. Some moments are full of thundering violence, with deep plaintive howls, alternated with more delicate and sensitive voices. Noble gets a long solo moment, and it's captivating, full of joy, both technically and musically. Then Rose gets his long solo moment, again it's raw, deeply emotional, strong and impressive. This is free improvisation at its best: in the moment, immediate, direct, rich and unpredictable, without fringes or needless embellishments. They manage to keep the intensity going, even in the quieter moments, and they manage to keep the inherent lyricism of their music, even in the most energetic moments. Strong!
This is a great performance, even grand, lifting music to a very high level. There is a level of purity and authenticity to it that resonates with your humble servant. We can thank Not Two to have released it, especially because both musicians are under-released. It's ferocious, sensitive and smart.
Don't miss it!
PS: Simon Rose now lives in Berlin. He's not the traveller like the other saxophonists mentioned in the first paragraph, so it may be worth a trip to Berlin to see and hear him perform.
Simon Rose & Philippe Lemoine – Séance (Tour De Bras, 2018) ****
On "Séance", Simon Rose performs in a duo with French saxophonist Philippe Lemoine, the former on baritone, the latter on tenor, and also a resident of Berlin. Much like Rose, he is an explorer of sound, like Rose playing with resonance, timbre, pressure, force and speed.
In contrast to the duo with Noble, we get twelve relatively short pieces, each around three minute long - like hit singles - which each on their own develop a musical short story. In contrast with the live performance with Noble, the overall tone is calmer and more subdued, even if that does not result in less adventurous or intense music. Both saxes use all their repertoire of instrumental techniques, such as timbral innovations, circular breathing in combination with improvisational inventiveness to create a wonderful dialogue of intertwining sounds.
The overall tone is incredibly warm, and the listener gets engulfed by this beautiful and strange summer breeze. There is no violence or sense of urgency, just the quiet and gentle embrace between two flows of sound, circling, merging, touching, very focused on each other. It's a dialogue which the listener is somehow part of, a privileged onlooker and inactive participant.
The meeting is one of a merging of European cultures, its common history and topography, and the title itself refers to the different meanings of "scéance" in French and English: in French it's just a happening, in English getting in contact with the dead. According to Rose in the liner notes: "Seance signifies something otherworldly, extra-sensory and at the same time an everyday musical encounter".
The 1970s produced some outstanding instances of work with larger
ensembles, employing the resources of saxophonist and bandleader Toshiyuki
Miyama and his New Herd Orchestra. Their Four Jazz Compositions - Based on Japanese Classical Themes
(Toshiba, 1970) is a seamless blend of two musical cultures, masterfully
orchestrated. Miyama invited pianist Masahiko Sato and percussionist
Masahiko Togashi to work with the New Herd, producing two classic albums
fashioned with a meticulous ear for distinctive combinations. Sato’s Canto of Libra (Columbia, 1970) and Togashi’s Canto of Aries (Columbia, 1971) mix the composed and improvised in
fresh imaginings of single and massed instrumental voices, owing as much to
the translucent textures of Debussy and Stravinsky’s orchestral works as
they do to the vibrancy of big band jazz.
Togashi’s Spiritual Nature (East Wind, 1975) is a suite for nine
musicians playing an array of instruments including cello, flutes,
saxophones, piano, celeste, marimba and glockenspiel, creating a
deliciously exotic, multi-coloured sound world, in the minds of some
depicting Japanese landscapes. Just as original is Sato and the New Herd’s Nayutageno (Columbia, 1976), a mural of highly charged solo
activity set against static blocks of orchestral sound. In some episodes
they seem to exist in different timeframes. El Al (Union, 1979)
was written for the New Herd by Takashi Kako, who had graduated from the
Paris Conservatoire with the Prix de Composition in 1976, and features
himself (piano), Akira Sakata (alto sax and clarinet) and Togashi amongst
swirling woodwind and rasping horns.
At the end of the decade Togashi and his Improvisation Jazz Orchestra
produced Al-Alaph (Paddle Wheel, 1980), conducted by Sato, who
also plays piano and electric piano, and using three percussionists. It’s a
75-minute opus of contrasting sections unified by a theme that recurs in
various guises, like an idée fixe – chanted by the musicians at
the opening over an elaborate drum beat, hauntingly extended by the
saxophones in ‘Winds’, sounded out over the hubbub of ‘Streets’, and
forming a backdrop of shifting chords on ‘Lonely’. Elements of the theme
are also used as the basis for improvised solos. The same forces
subsequently recorded Follow the Dream (Paddle Wheel, 1985), this
time with Masayuki Takayanagi on guitar, another diverse collection lasting
almost 90 minutes, ranging from the exquisitely crafted to boisterous
blowouts. All these albums stand comparison with Mingus, Gil Evans and the
best of the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra and Globe Unity for their ingenious
synthesis of scored and improvised music, rhythmic vitality and novel
voicings.
Given how brightly the fires burned in the 1970s, inevitably, the
temperature cooled somewhat in the 1980s and beyond. There was more concord
than discord with the ambit of the music widening further as new forms and
styles were incorporated. Some musicians simply moved beyond genre. As so
often, much of this had been prefigured by Sato. He composed, conducted and
arranged the album Amalgamation (Liberty, 1971). Part 1 crosscuts
between a brass ensemble, string quartet, far-out rock band, funky Hammond
organ and the voice of Adolf Hitler in a rudimentary collage that sounds
somewhere between Frank Zappa and John Zorn. Part 2 seeks to integrate by
layering traditional Japanese music with a free jazz dialogue between
Mototeru Takagi (reeds) and Toyozumi Yoshisaburo (drums), chants and
churchy organ, and ethereal, wordless vocals.
In a different direction, the piano duo album Exchange (Victor,
1979) by Haruna Miyake and Yosuke Yamashita is a prismatic display that
comes directly from the sound of contemporary classical piano music; one of
the tracks is even called ‘Schoenberg’. The piece “Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony’ is an ambitious improvisation around the ‘Ode to Joy’ and the
theme from the slow movement of the symphony, recast in continually
changing contexts, with the opening bars of the Fifth Symphony thrown in
for good measure. This is more than mere hybridisation however, and makes a
surrealistic sense. Yamashita and Togashi, previously regarded as quite
different strains of the free jazz scene, performed as a duo on Kizashi (Next Wave, 1980): a counterpoint of melodic lines on both
drums and piano, now dancing rather than boxing. Yamashita gradually turned
his virtuoso gifts to shedding new light on a broader repertoire and
reimagining the history of jazz piano, with affection not irony, in
combinations that in their own way are as creative as his earlier work. His Bolero (Enja, 1986) with Hozan Yamamoto, one of the leading
figures in shakuhachi (bamboo flute) music, is another fascinating merger
of East and West.
Togashi was also at home in contemporary music. The composer and pianist
Yuji Takahashi had studied in Paris with Xenakis and recorded the complete
Sonatas and Interludes of John Cage. In 1976 he and Togashi played together
on the album Twilight (Denon, 1977) and later began to perform
publicly as an improvising duo (Duo Live 1988 (Masahiko Togashi
Archives, 2014)). They can also be heard on Hall Egg Farm (Egg
Farm, 2009) with Steve Lacy. Increasing his musical horizons even further,
in 1993 Sato took part in the celebrations of the 850th
anniversary of the Buddhist teacher Kakuban at the Bodokan, performing and
conducting his own composition for a small orchestra comprised mainly of
free jazz musicians, augmented by a chorus of one thousand monks using
random vocalisations and tunings. No recording was made of the microtonal
monks, and probably none could do them justice.
The Eastasia Orchestra was a unit led by alto saxophonist Yoshiaki
Fujikawa, a smorgasbord of Asian roots music – traditional Indian and
Chinese melodies, gamelan rhythms, Japanese oiwake folk sounds –
wrapped up in a bouncy big band with free jazz blowing. Conducted by
Fujikawa, and full of surprises, he would pick out soloists, duos and trios
on the spot to liven up the arrangements. Their 1984 tour of Europe was a
huge success, culminating in a concert at the Volksbühne (“People’s
Theatre”) in East Berlin before an audience of three thousand: Jazzbühne Berlin '84 (Repertoire, 1991). The following day,
enthusiastic customs officials who’d heard the performance waived them
through passport control without the need for a baggage check.
Such exercises in cross-pollination led Soejima to write, in 1990:
“Because jazz is a living thing, if you cram it into a jar and shut the
lid, it dries up and dies. So waking up to other types of improvised music,
combining them with jazz, genetically modifying them to become new types of
music is a positive development…What is called “free jazz” may be thought
of as something between death and reincarnation.”
Which might be as good a definition as you’ll find.
One particularly moving story is that of the double bass player Motoharu
Yoshizawa, who was more interested in understanding himself and those about
him than the technicalities of music making, playing solo but frequently
with others for extra stimulus. Duo 1969.10.9 (PSF, 1994) with
Mototeru Takagi, which contains an impassioned rendering of Ornette’s
‘Lonely Woman’, <Nord> Duo '75 (ALW, 1981) with Kaoru Abe,
Two Chaps
(Chap Chap, 2015) with Evan Parker, and
Oh My, Those Boys!
(NoBusiness, 2018) with fellow bassist Barre Phillips are all of the
highest quality. Suffering from liver problems, in the last year of his
life he collaborated with the Gyaatees, a group of monks with learning
disabilities. As he told Soejima on the telephone:
“They are all really great. It may be hard to get them coordinated for
sutra chanting, but each of them sings with an absolutely pure heart. This
is real improvising.”
Knowing the end was near, Yoshizawa organised a “Memorial Service for the
Living Motoharu Yoshizawa” to take place on September 15, 1998, to which
the Gyaatees were invited. It was rumoured it would be his last
performance, but he passed three days beforehand and the concert became a
true memorial.
Soejima’s narrative ends as one century turns into the next, and the
emergence of figures such as guitarist Otomo Yoshihide and pianist and band
leader Satoko Fujii. The story of free jazz in Japan doesn’t end with the
close of the twentieth century, but his book is a salutary reminder of why
music matters and the importance it can have in the lives of performers and
listeners alike. Free jazz is a universal language that has many dialects,
some with roots in national cultures. Innovation and originality are
attempts to find a vocabulary for a language yet to be formulated in
musical experience. Bearing that in mind, there are certain characteristics
and concerns within the music discussed over the last three days – by no
means unique or generic, and which admit of degrees – which can be
considered distinctive of the Japanese free jazz parlance developed during
this period. They are features that range from tangible timbres (how stuff
sounds) to more abstract considerations, alternative ways to experience and
think about music.
A great deal of the music exhibits a sensitivity to space and proportion –
what in Japan is called “ma” – a respect for the balancing attributes of
positive and negative space, which can be found everywhere from woodprints
and ink wash paintings to garden design and shakuhachi music. There’s a
heightening of spatial depth and a feeling for the texture of time passing
(in the West, something similar can be found in certain black and white
photography and film). Sounds are given room to breathe according to their
own distinct resonances, a peculiarly sensual engagement where the subject
is sonority and how it can be handled according to an internal,
self-engendered logic that has regard to the power of silence as well as
the clashes that can activate that space. The result is musical development
that is more environmental than structural, and where sound can have the
presence of colour, an almost synesthesthetic experience. Writing about the
“transcendental ambient creations” of Takayanagi’s solo
Action Direct
, Soejima says:
“Sound is supposed to be vibration, but when converted to particles and
waves, tone changes to colour and a huge kaleidoscopic space is created. It
changes into physical matter, each tone heavy and dense.”
The integration of traditional instruments and ancient ways of thinking are
also relevant, perhaps echoing Japanese perspectives on our relationship to
history – not reproducing the past but using it to liberate the present and
produce something grounded but new, more concerned with cyclical continuity
than an ascending line of progress that casts off what went before. On Essence by Togashi's Guild for Human Music (Denon, 1977) cello,
flute and saxophones are delicately woven over traditional rhythmic
patterns played on marimba and assorted percussion. Sato and the New Herd’s Yamataifu (Express, 1972) is an imaginatively scored portrait of
the Yamataikoku legend, the land where Japan began, in which jazzy accents
combine with folk-like tunes and avant-garde textures. Sato manipulates the
sound of his piano using live electronics in a way that evokes antique
instruments and yet at the same time sounds completely modern.
Buddhist thought provides the general framework for his three solo piano
albums recorded in January, March and April 1976, considered by Soejima to
be a pinnacle of 1970s free jazz in Japan: Multi-Spheroid, Yǔn (“Acceptance”) and Kwan-Ji-Zai, all on the Denon
label – according to Soejima, “like a three-sided mirror reflecting Sato’s
own consciousness”. The album Kwan-Ji-Zai, named after the Goddess
of mercy, was improvised while Sato was looking at the art of calligrapher
Katsuhiko Sato, playing “just in the same way as you cast your shadow”. At
Moers in 1982, he performed with live calligraphy as inspiration and
Japanese dancer Tadashi Endo responding to the music, released (audio only)
as Apostrophe (Crown, 1993).
There are times when the pentatonic scales of Japanese music lend a
distinctive flavour, something Soejima identifies as a distinguishing
feature when comparing Yamashita’s playing with the more blues-based chords
of Cecil Taylor. There can also be a noticeably different sense of rhythm
and how it functions, possibly influenced by taiko drumming. Even
when using a standard drumkit it’s a sound that can stress skin rather than
stick, with equal weight given to strong and weak beats and less emphasis
on rhythmic subdivisions. Pulse is a matter of pacing rather than metre. As
Togashi said of his solo percussion recording, Rings (East Wind,
1976), divided into twelve parts corresponding to the months of the year
and changes in the seasons, “It’s neither a metronome nor a jazz beat.
There are more natural rhythms in the natural world”.
Soejima’s book is essential reading for anyone with even a passing interest
in free jazz and provides a gateway to not only a body of work which is at
risk of being forgotten but some of the most challenging and inventive
music the medium has produced. A great deal deserves to be better known and
there’s a danger it will be increasingly overlooked outside the low-profile
world of free jazz, and within that realm, sunk under the tsunami of new
releases. For many years the limited availability of these albums, even
within Japan, high import costs, language barriers and the self-effacing
nature of Japanese culture meant that only the most determined, and those
with deep pockets, were able to access the recordings. That has changed as
a result of the Internet. Many of the albums are available on Inconstant Sol,
due to the sterling work of Nick, Ernst Nebhuth and others. (I’m grateful
to Ernst for an illuminating exchange of emails while writing this review.)
There’s also
Different Perspectives in my Room..!
, that specialises in quality vinyl rips, and YouTube which has a good
selection of albums in acceptable sound. There are occasional new releases
and re-releases. NoBusiness recently put out An Eternal Moment, a
1995 concert from Kang Tae Hwan and his favourite percussionist, Midori
Takada, and Takayanagi’s April is the Cruellest Month has just
been released for the first time on vinyl by the Blank Forms label.
Soejima passed on 12 July 2014 at the age of 83. At his funeral a recording
was played, which he made shortly before his death: “Even standing before
the ruler of hell, I expect to act as a free man. That is what life is all
about.” Almost unheard of in Japan, the mourners applauded as one.
Culturally, no country is an island, and it was not long before those
outside Japan began to take notice and a series of international exchanges
took place. In February 1971, the German All Stars visited Tokyo, and
Manfred Schoof, Albert Mangelsdorff, Gerd Dudek, Michel Pilz and Wolfgang
Dauner sat in with local musicians at New Jazz Hall, refusing to accept
payment (Soejima suggested beers all round afterwards instead). Masahiko
Sato and Dauner’s piano duo, Pianology (Express, 1971) is the only
record of the first free jazz meeting between these nations, but Joachim E.
Berendt, who co-produced the session, arranged for Sato’s trio to play at
the Berlin Jazz Festival later that year. The piano was out of tune and
their time had been reduced from 40 to 25 minutes. Sato refused to play,
and Berendt took flowers to his hotel room to persuade him to go on. As can
be heard on the recording, Penetration (Toshiba, 1972), Sato got
his 40 minutes, but the piano is still lousy though heavily masked by
extensive use of a ring modulator. Perhaps reflecting the importance of
such exposure, it was initially released in Japan as a quadrophonic LP in a
presentation box with obi-strip, the “sash” that fits over the spine of
Japanese LPs and CDs. Sato was provided with better pianos in the
recordings he made either side of his Berlin festival appearance, however: Trinity (Enja, 1971) a live studio date in Munich with Peter
Warren (double bass) and Pierre Favre (drums) and Spontaneous
(Enja, 1972) with Warren, Mangelsdorff (trombone) and Allen Blairman
(drums), both highly successful collaborations.
Anthony Braxton visited Japan in 1973. His visa did not permit public
performance, but there was a midnight recording session with Sato’s trio,
which shows them completely at ease with his idiom and compositions,
playing those tricky unison passages flawlessly. Four Compositions (1973) (Columbia, 1973) is one of Braxton’s best
early albums, also notable for being one of the first ever digital
recordings, made using experimental PCM technology with a now obsolete
sampling frequency and bit rate, which might explain why, ironically, the
album has never been released on CD. Double bassist Gary Peacock, who’d
played with Ayler, Bill Evans and Paul Bley, had been living in Japan since
1969 and appeared on four significant trio albums with pianists Sato and
Masabumi Kikuchi before his return to the US in 1972: Eastward
(Sony CBS, 1970), Voices (Sony CBS, 1971),Poesy: The Man who Keeps Washing his Hands (Philips, 1971) and Samādhi (Express, 1972).
From 1973, some of the younger free jazz musicians began to visit Europe to
do their “knight-errantry”, with Paris a focal spot. From the second half
of the nineteenth century and the invention of “Japonisme”, there had been
strong cultural ties between France and Japan and in the early 70s Paris
had become something of a melting pot for free jazz with many expatriate
musicians having taken up residence or working there for extended periods.
Saxophonist Mototeru Takagi went for a year, picking up the nickname
“monster” and recording Out from the Edge (Angelus, 1974) and Jazz a Maison de Japon, Paris (Nadja, 1974) with pianist Takashi
Kako, who’d been turned on to free jazz while studying composition with
Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, and Americans Kent Carter (double
bass) and Ron Pittner (drums). Soejima writes of the track ‘Sekibutsu’
(“Stone Buddha”), “Takagi’s slow, elegant phrasings scream as if melting
forever into eternity”.
Trumpet player Itaru Oki made a more long-term commitment to France.
Describing himself as creating abstract spaces from internal waves, his
trio’s album, Satsujin Kyoshitsu (“School for Murder”) (1970) had
been the sole release on the Jazz Creaters label, set up by Soejima while
at New Jazz Hall. On ‘A Dialogue with Water – Aporia’, Oki plays while
dipping his trumpet into a bowl of water, like an extended mute, and
‘Flight in Space – Papillion’ replicates the movement of a butterfly. Well
established in Tokyo, and to the astonishment of many, Oki announced he
would be moving to Paris permanently in order to find his own place in
European free jazz. In April 1974 he went on a 33 date, “sayonara” tour of
Japan with his quartet, produced by Soejima. The performances got better as
the tour progressed and audiences were stunned by the group’s intensity,
adding extra poignancy to Oki’s departure. The last night was released as Shirasagi (Nadja, 1974), a landscape that echoes with
electronically enhanced trumpet and Shoji Ukaji’s growling baritone,
followed by music of crumbling density, driven by the friction of forces
and counterforces. Oki went to Paris, and stayed, though he returned to
Japan on occasions as heard on the recently released,
Kami Fusen
(NoBusiness, 2017). Drummer Masahiko Togashi’s travels were limited due to
his disability but in July 1979 he visited Paris leaving two records of his
stay in the city of lights, consisting entirely of his own compositions: Song of Soil (Paddle Wheel, 1979) with Don Cherry and Charlie
Haden, and Colour of Dream (Paddle Wheel, 1980) with Kako, Albert
Mangelsdorff and J.-F. Jenny-Clark (double bass), line-ups that give an
indication of Togashi’s reputation, world-wide. As Cherry observed,
“Togashi’s drumming is nothing like New York drumming. Togashi is Togashi”.
Akira Sakata arrived in Tokyo from Hiroshima in 1969, having agreed with
his family that he would stay for three years to make it as a professional
saxophone player, failing which he would return home. He worked as a driver
and in a design studio and after work, absent the Williamsburg Bridge,
would practice his alto in Yoyogi Park among the trees (subsequently, his
jerky stage manner was attributed to stopping mosquitoes biting his legs).
Travel further round the park and you could hear Shoji Ukaji practicing on
his tenor. As an aside, parks and other unusual locations seem to have
proved attractive. In the 1980s, the hardcore free jazz players,
saxophonist Naoji Kondo and drummer Mitsumasa “Goku” Nonaka, nicknamed
after a manga comic character (the importance of which in Japanese life
should not be underestimated) performed in the corner of a park in
Shinjuku, harassed by officials and police but supported by the local
yakuza (mafia). Nonaka then raised his sights and played on top of Mount
Fuji, no easy task given the difficult ascent, freezing temperature and
reduced oxygen levels. In 1987 he decided to follow the route of the
ancient Silk Road, across the Himalayas into India, then on to Western Asia
and Istanbul, transporting 90kg of drum equipment to play solo shows
wherever he stopped. His performance at a refugee camp in Afghanistan was
welcomed by an overflowing crowd and his adventures are recorded in his
book, Bachiatari (“Accursed”).
Returning to Sakata, his reputation grew. Kaoru Abe was an admirer but
unlike Abe, Sakata was a team player, more interested in group performance.
He appeared frequently with the Yosuke Yamashita trio and in late 1972
replaced Seiichi Nakamura on saxophone, introducing new energy levels. On
Schoof’s recommendation, the trio were invited by Horst Weber to tour
Europe in 1974 where they received an enthusiastic response, described in
the press as “kamikaze jazz”, more diplomatically by Soejima as “the most
powerful and exciting trio ever”. Over the next few years they proved more
popular in Europe than Japan. Clay (Enja, 1974), recorded at the
Moers International New Jazz Festival in Germany is a good example of their
incendiary fervour and stamina, as is Montreux Afterglow (Frasco,
1976) with new drummer Shota Koyama, which contains a stonking version of
Ayler’s ‘Ghosts’. A quartet with Schoof (trumpet, flugelhorn) in Stuttgart
is also recommended: Distant Thunder (Enja, 1975).
Inevitably, America beckoned, primarily for more mainstream musicians but
also for some who played free jazz. After Togashi’s paralysing accident,
Takagi formed a duo with drummer Sabu Toyozumi,
another of those powerful sax and drums combos, as can be heard on If Ocean is Broken (Qbico, 2009) recorded in April 1971. Not long
after that date, Toyozumi went to Chicago to check out AACM, arriving
unannounced but welcomed at concerts and sessions, and became the first
non-American member of the Association. After six months he moved to Paris
and played with Braxton. then back to Japan via Bali where he spent four
months studying gamelan music. Later, he arranged for overseas musicians to
play with him in an annual series of duos, including John Zorn (the first
of many visits to Japan) trombonist Paul Rutherford – Fragrance
(NOL, 2000) –.and Wadada Leo Smith. On Cosmos has Spirit
(Scissors, 1992) Smith plays trumpet, a self-made bamboo flute and kalimba,
and Toyozumi “non-tempered” percussion.
In 1974, saxophonist Kaazutoki Umezo went to New York for a year, hanging
out in the loft scene and recording Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai (ALM,
1975) with William Parker and others. He played with percussionist Tatsuya
Nakamura who was also in New York, astounding the locals with his home-made
instruments including a “quarter drum”, thirty pieces of plastic plumbing
pipe of differing diameters and lengths with drumheads attached. After
hearing the collection of festival performances, Inspiration and Power 14 (Trio, 1973) Bernard Stollman of New
York’s ESP Records expressed an interest in making a series of recordings
of Japanese free jazz, an exciting prospect given the prestigious status of
the label. It was decided that guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi’s New
Directions Unit would be the first and recordings sessions were held in
April and May 1975. Since it was a foreign release it was given the title April is the Cruellest Month, taken from the opening line of T. S.
Eliot’s The Waste Land. Soejima wrote the liner notes (“a sound
like a raging sea…a blast of wind…a jet engine in flight”) and the master
tape was sent to ESP, who assigned it a catalogue number. Nothing further
was heard. ESP went bust, Takayanagi shrugged his shoulders, “these things
happen”, and it was not until after his death that the album was released
on CD using a copy master retained by the producer (April Disk, 1991).
From the late 70s Western and Japanese improvisors were brought together in
Japan in events often organised by the musicians themselves, picking out
combinations that would provide a new challenge. Trumpet player Toshinori
Kondo invited Misha Mengelberg and the ICP Orchestra, joining in their
onstage antics -- Japan Japon (ICP, 1982) – and later brought over
Peter Brötzmann, Bill Laswell and Henry Kaiser: Tokyo Meeting 1984
(Dessert/Tojusha, 1985). The 1982 Panmusik Festival, sponsored by the
Goethe Institute, was one of Soejima’s favourites, and produced Contrast (Paddle Wheel, 1983) a trio of Togashi, Lauren Newton
(voice) and Peter Kowald (double bass, harmonica) in a potpourri of scat,
Japanese idioms, reverberant bass scrapes and pattering percussion. Kowald
returned in 1986 and recorded Global Village Suite Improvised
(FMP, 1988) with Danny Davis (alto saxophone, flute) and Takehisa Kosugi
(violin), and the Japanese portion of Duos: Europa · America · Japan (FMP, 1991), his travelogue of
improvised music.
Soejima was not the only person prominent in promoting and organising free
jazz in Japan. There was also Akira Aida. Soejima and Aida had collaborated
closely after the opening of New Jazz Hall but then fell out when the
latter made a speech from the stage inciting the audience to attack the
Pitt Inn, whose generosity had allowed the venue to operate. In consequence
Takayanagi, who supported Aida’s right to make such statements, broke-off
with Soejima. Having introduced Takayanagi and Abe, Aida was then the
catalyst for the demise of the duo, telling them after one gig, “it’s still
not right, not good enough”. Abe laughed but Takayanagi took umbrage, and
that was the end of that. Takayanagi then made up with Soejima but Soejima
was never reconciled with Aida – the soap opera that is musical life.
Aida had arranged for visits by Steve Lacy and Milford Graves to Japan and
was the distributor for the FMP and Incus labels. He invited Derek Bailey
to tour with a collection of leading free jazz musicians from his Hangesha
collective – Abe, Kondo, Motoharu Yoshizawa (double bass) and Toshiyuki
Tsuchitori (drums). Bailey described Aida as a kind of Svengali figure, but
all went well with audiences of up to six or seven hundred each night,
making Bailey enough money to buy a car on his return to London. In
addition to playing solo – New Sights, Old Sounds/Solo Live
(Morgue, 1979) – the performances adopted the permutation format he
favoured, as heard on the live Aida's Call (Starlight Furniture
Co, 1999) and studio albums, Duo & Trio Improvisation (Kitty,
1978) and The Music...Hardcore Jazz (Kitty, 2003). Bailey was
impressed by the different approach to ensemble dynamics and visited Japan
again, including Company weeks in 1981 and 1993, as well as playing with
Japanese musicians in Europe and America. Aida died in December 1978 at the
age of 32, three months after Abe, suffering a cerebral haemorrhage.
Soejima left Japan for the first time in 1977 and visited the Moers
festival, one of the preeminent free jazz festivals in the world: “There my
eyes were opened wide and every avant-garde cell in my bloodstream went
raging through my body.” The following year, producer Burkhard Hennen asked
him to recommend musicians for each year’s festival, the beginning of an
artistically fruitful relationship, though not financially rewarding.
Soejima received no payment for his work and elected to stand his own
annual air fare out of respect for the festival. As a result, each year
European audiences were treated to free jazz from Japan – in 1979 the
F.M.T. trio (Yoshiaki Fujikawa, alto saxophone, Keiki Midorikawa, bass and
cello, Sabu Toyozumi, drums), in 1980 Takayanagi’s New Direction (his only
overseas appearance, due to increasingly debilitating hepatitis) issued as Live at Moers Festival (Three Blind Mice, 1980) and in 1981,
multi-reedist, Keizo Inoue. Much older than the generation with whom he
played, Inoue had given Sakata clarinet lessons in Hiroshima and taught
himself free jazz by playing along with records before he broke into the
Tokyo scene in his fifties. There was a strong theatrical element to his
performances: at an outside festival at Ueno Park (those parks again) he
stopped playing and dove headfirst into the Shinobazu Pond, followed by
members of the audience to rescue him. There was nothing quite as dramatic
at Moers where he played solo sets over three days on the special projects
stage and sat in with English band Alterations and his former pupil’s trio.
The LP In Moers '81 (Trio, 1981), recorded over two nights, has
the elemental ‘Himmel’, ‘Wasser’ and ‘Feuer’, played solo on side 1 and on
side 2, ‘Passionato’, a sequence of six flickering duos and trios with Paul
Lovens (percussion) and Günther Christmann (trombone, double bass) –
expanded to the full fifteen sections on the CD release of 2002 – an
inspired and serendipitous meeting of like-minded improvisors.
In gratitude for Soejima’s work, early on Hennen gave him permission to
film performances at Moers, and thus began his documentary movies, a new
one for each festival. For ten years Soejima would travel all over Japan
showing them in small coffee bars and the like, shot on 8mm film with sound
added from cassette recordings, answering questions afterwards and acting
as a proselytizer for progressive music to audiences outside the major
centres. As Otomo Yoshihide writes in his introduction to the book,
“Anthony Braxton, Han Bennink, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, all names we had
only known from records and magazines, were there improvising right in
front of us.” In the era of YouTube, we take much for granted.
Soejima was also responsible for promoting the Korean alto saxophonist Kan
Tae Hwan. On first hearing his trio, Soejima noticed something different
from anything in Europe or Japan and arranged for them to tour. In 1979,
after the trio broke up, he organised a solo tour of Japan for Hwan
alongside that year’s Moers documentary. His music was an absorbing blend
of Asian folk music with textures and articulations associated with free
jazz: circular breathing, layered multiphonics and extremes in register and
dynamics. He played cross-legged and would use the floor as a resonant
sounding board. The free jazz musicians of Japan were intrigued, hearing
similarities with their own music but also a unique spirit. Hwan played
with Sato and female percussionist Midori Takada at the Pitt Inn in 1990, a
meeting of kindred spirits, as a result of which they formed the trio
Ton-Klami (“Circle” in Korean). Their set at Moers in 1991 (In Moers (Ninety-One, 1993)) is striking, an imaginative use of
quasi-minimalist processes with Hwan’s pulsating saxophone and the gamelan
sonority of piano and marimba moving in and out of phase like superimposed
waves of light, fading then forming into new patterns.
Particularly in his solo work, there’s a shamanistic quality to Hwan’s
playing, slow accumulations that form part of a larger picture which
unfolds gradually at a pace where conventional time seems to have stopped;
spare, considered music in which each note and dynamic fluctuation are
precisely weighted, every inflection carefully graded. There’s something of
Abe’s sonic purity about him but projected from a place of internal
balance. Two recent albums on the NoBusiness label are representative of
his refinement and distillation: Prophecy of Nue with the
Ton-Klami trio (2017) and the solo
Live at Café Amores(2018), both taken from performances in 1995.
Yamashita in a reunion concert with those who made up the three versions of
his classic trio, plus Naruyoshi Kikuchi (tenor) and Katsuo Kuninaka (bass
guitar).
Free Jazz in Japan: A Personal History
is the long-awaited English translation, by Kato David Hopkins, of Teruto
Soejima’s Nihon Furī Jazu-Shi (“The History of Japanese Free
Jazz”) published in 2002. It’s available through the Public Bath Press website and from London’s Iklektic from where I got my copy.
Other specialist venues and stores may also be stocking it.
The translator’s subtitle is significant. Free jazz in Japan is a truly
vast subject, even for the limited period covered by Soejima. He doesn’t
purport to deal with everything, just how he saw it and the part he played,
with a liberal smattering of anecdotes some of which you really couldn’t
make up. During this three-part review I’ll mention many albums that are
invaluable documents from an era full of startling creativity and riches.
Most are discussed by Soejima, but it’s not a definitive list and readers
should feel free to add their own recommendations in the comments section
after the third part of the review has been posted. I’ll be using the
Western convention of family names last, which is how the musicians tend to
be listed on Discogs and elsewhere. The book places family names first, in
Japanese order.
Soejima was at the centre of free jazz during its formative years in Japan,
acting as organiser, promoter, journalist, catalyser, confidant and
peacemaker. In many respects it’s a familiar story – the more things
change, the more they stay the same – mirroring the development of music,
culture and politics at the time, both in Japan and internationally. There
are formidable egos, fragile temperaments, fights over how to end numbers,
petty feuds, cultural fusion, remarkable fortitude, high farce and tragic
fatality, but above all a burning passion to create something immediate and
new, a conviction that the world was changing, anything was possible, and
free jazz was the medium in which to achieve it. In a way, Japan’s
separation from the established centres of jazz, previously regarded as a
shortcoming, became one of its principal advantages. As in Europe, the
distance allowed a less self-conscious break with jazz traditions and a
more ready adoption of other influences – domestic and foreign,
contemporary and historic – combined with a rate of accelerated growth
probably unmatched elsewhere. No doubt, much of the groundwork had already
been done in America and Europe but the speed at which Japanese musicians
absorbed and innovated is astounding.
The narrative opens fifty years ago in 1969, the year in which free jazz
reached maturity in Japan, signalled by landmark performances and
recordings from many of the musicians who were to dominate the scene in the
following years. Soejima is attending a rehearsal in late August by
guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi’s New Directions trio, held in a back room at
Shinjuku’s Pitt Inn, Tokyo.
“A tremendous blast of sound seemed to blow the air out of the windowless
chamber. It was, in fact, an intensely creative sound. Wrapped around the
machine gun staccato of Yoshisaburo Toyozumi’s drumming, Motoharu
Yoshizawa’s bowed bass raised its voice in a low moan. And slashing all
around them was Masayuki Takayanagi’s guitar. This was free jazz”.
The trio were playing ‘Mass Projection’, one of Takayanagi’s signature
pieces, rehearsing for their debut recording the next month, Independence: Tread on Sure Ground (Union, 1970). That number
didn’t make it onto the album but can be heard on Live Independence (P.S.F, 1995) taken from performances in 1970
which give a good idea of the kinetic kick that floored Soejima. During the
trio’s appearances at the run-down Nagisa jazz coffee shop the vibrational
energy was so great that paint fell from the decrepit ceiling onto the
audience, like flakes of snow. Takayanagi was the instigator of the
Japanese school of guitar-shredding but was far more than a mere noise
merchant, having the skill to trap, mould and release unruly swathes of
sound, exercising judgment in deciding when to let loose and how to
control. “I am not a noise artist,” he said, “I am making noisy music”, and
more tellingly, “The goal has been finding concrete expression for the
stillness and motion inherent in space”, an indication of a particularly
Japanese aesthetic that was to pervade much of the music.
Earlier in 1969, a quintet led by drummer Masahiko Togashi and trombonist
Hiroshi Suzuki recorded Variation (Takt, 1969). The title track
opens out into variations of a very different kind to those usually
expected and ‘Suzu No Uta’ (“Bell Song”) consists of an unbroken piano run
against a background of glittering percussion; further signs of the
emergence of a fresh conception of musical space. In May, Togashi, along
with Takayanagi, Mototeru Takagi (tenor, cornpipe), and Motoharu Yoshizawa
(double bass, cello) recorded We Now Create - Music for Strings, Winds and Percussion (Victor,
1969). Something quite new is going on here, from the opening screeching
guitar and strangulated tenor of ‘Variations on a Theme of "Feed Back"’ to
the flowing but incisive drums of ‘Artistry in Percussion’ and the
concluding ‘Fantasy for Strings’, a textural melange of nervous acoustic
guitar, plucked cello, twittering cornpipe and microscopic bursts of
percussion. The album suggests many possible directions, which may be why
it’s considered by some to be the start of the free jazz era in Japan, and
shared joint honours as jazz record of the year. The other album was Palladium (Express, 1969) from a trio led by pianist Masahiko Sato
(also spelt “Satoh”). Sato had returned to Japan in 1968, having completed
his composition coursework at Berklee College of Music two years into the
four-year course, when he was told there was nothing further they could
teach him. In the following years he would exhibit a dazzling technical and
imaginative versatility, producing innovative music in many fields, as
pianist, collaborator, composer, arranger and conductor. The compositions
of Messiaen were an early influence, as can be heard in the shimmering
pianism of his solo, Holography (Columbia, 1970). Palladium featured Yasuo Arakawa on double bass, and Togashi on
drums – he and Sato worked together closely – and includes a rendition of
the Beatles’ ‘Michelle’ where the theme emerges from an impressionistic
swirl, then floats slowly into abstraction.
Shortly thereafter, the trio recorded a performance given at the
prestigious Sankei Hall, Deformation (Express, 1969) which lends
weight to Soejima’s claim that Sato’s thinking was about ten years ahead of
the rest. During the first half of the concert live electronic sounds are
woven into the ensemble texture and in the second half the trio is
accompanied at points by a pre-recorded orchestral score (presumably,
composed by Sato) which is joined in the final stages by the drones and
chants of a choir. During the intermission there was tape of an old woman
singing a traditional folk song, retained on the album.
By this stage, Soejima was aware of something important in the air and had
begun running a jazz magazine. He was invited to join the newly established
(and short-lived) Japan Jazz Association, which in September 1969 put on
“Concert in New Jazz” at Sankei Hall featuring Togashi’s ESSG (Experimental
Sound Space Group) and pianist Yosuke Yamashita’s trio.
Yamashita had started playing with the trio in March of that year,
featuring Seiichi Nakamura on saxophones and Takeo Moriyama, drums, in
high-octane energy music that swept all before it. They’d been invited
to perform “behind the barricades
” in a basement during the student occupation of Waseda University in July,
released as Dancing Kojiki (Maro, 1969). The opening track,
‘Agitation’, is a student announcement on megaphone, the remainder
incandescent piano pounding, tumultuous drumming and a soprano saxophone
that sounds on occasions like a wailing siren. An abridged version of the
September Sankei Hall performance was released as Concert in New Jazz (Union, 1969) (the full version appeared on CD
in 1991) and was followed swiftly by Mina’s Second Theme (Victor,
1969), named after one of the staples of the trio’s sets. This was music
physical and direct, as Yamashita pronounced:
“Jazz is more like boxing or soccer, with sound…What the “player” should
rightly be striving for is not “a work of art” in any sense, but the best
possible kick he can make at that particular moment. That’s all.”
Fittingly, Yamashita wrote ‘Clay’ for the soundtrack of the film, April Fool: Coming Muhammad Ali (URC, 1972).
Taking a different path, in November a quartet comprising Togashi, Sato,
Takagi and Yoshio Ikeda (double and electric bass) recorded Speed and Space – The Concept of Space in Music (Union, 1969), an
exploration of Togashi’s notion of Jikanritsu (“Time Law”). The album can
be seen as a study in how texture, rhythm and differing rates of change
effect our perception of the passage of time in music – the superimposed
layers of ‘Panorama’, the floating world of ‘Expectation’, fast-paced and
expanding in ‘Speed and Space #1’, and the gaseous state of ‘#2’, the sound
of air moving and slow-motion formations made up of cymbal whispers,
drifting notes, chimes and rumbling piano. Reflecting the Japanese concern
for sonic quality, the LP’s sleeve dealt with the disposition of musicians
and microphones at the session and use of the then state-of-the art Neumann
SX68 cutting lathe to produce the master lacquer.
It was also in November 1969 that Soejima opened New Jazz Hall. It was the
same former instrument storage room at Pit Inn at which he’d heard
Takayanagi’s trio rehearsing back in August, a “hall” only in the sense
that no drinks were served. From Friday to Sunday it functioned as an
experimental laboratory for the new music which continued to flourish. On
19 December, Togashi and Takagi went into the studio to record the
soundtrack for Masao Adachi’s film, A.K.A. Serial Killer,
concerning the recently convicted mass-murderer, Norio Nagayama, an
instance of “landscape cinema” which forgoes actors or narrative in favour
of scenes of places where Nagayama had lived or which he visited, with no
audio apart from music and the occasional voice-over from the director.
Takagi plays tenor saxophone, bass clarinet and cornpipe and Togashi a
range of tuned and untuned percussion. The music is completely improvised
and attempts to depict the psychological and emotional states of Nagayama
during three phases of his life. Togashi tried to forget all his learnt
techniques to achieve the right level of spontaneity and authenticity. “I
think we pushed ourselves pretty close to the edge” he later observed.
This was the last performance Togashi would record with the use of his
legs. Six weeks later he was involved in an accident that damaged his
spinal cord leaving him paralysed from the waist down. During his
convalesce after discharge from hospital, he edited the soundtrack to
produce Isolation (Columbia, 1971), an album that ranks alongside
other ground-breaking pairings of reeds and percussion – Coltrane and
Rashied Ali on Interstellar Space, recorded in 1967 but not
released until 1974, and New Acoustic Swing Duo by Willem Breuker
and Han Bennink (ICP, 1967) – and is one of many outstanding recordings in
the duo format from Japan. When the movie premiered a few years later
members of the audience attended with tape recorders to capture the
complete performance.
New Jazz Hall closed in May 1971 due to financial difficulties (its
audiences had ranged from five to thirty on a good night) and relocated to
the Pulcinella, a small puppet theatre, for ten days each month. One night,
a knife-wielding chef from an adjoining restaurant burst in – he’d been
putting up with this noise for three years and wasn’t going to take it
anymore. Wisely, Soejima did not point out that it had been operating as a
music venue for not nearly that long and had a soundproof steel door
installed. It was one of a number of small clubs, cafes and bars which
hosted free jazz that sprang up in Tokyo over the years; Soejima calls them
“incubators”. There was Station ’70, with a mirrored ceiling and wall made
up of TV screens, an expense that might explain why it only lasted until
January 1971. More frugally, Shoji Aketagawa used the basement of a rice
shop to open the imaginatively titled “A Shop Where Only My Uncompromising
Jazz Performer Friends Can Appear”, seating twenty people. Later, there was
the Om bar, holding a similar number who were encouraged to cheer on the
musicians, described by Peter Brötzmann as the smallest jazz club in the
world but having the hottest atmosphere. If the proprietor, Hiroshi Torii,
thought a performer was flagging he’d jump on the bar, shouting, and splash
them with water or drinks.
There were also bigger ventures. In 1973, Soejima was involved in
organising the first major free jazz festival in Japan, Inspiration and
Power 14, held over fourteen nights and featuring most of the leading
musicians from the scene. Trio Records agreed to record the festival and
put out a 2-LP set later that year, an album which showcases the variety of
music being made, from solo bass to big band. Due to the number of
performers, each extract is limited to about ten minutes, including the duo
of Sato and Togashi, whose performance marked Togashi’s return to the
public stage. After having suffered a disability that would have put an end
to the working life of most drummers, Togashi had relearned how to play
using a specially designed wheelchair and kit (his bass drum was mounted to
one side). If anything, his percussive play was even more inventive, having
a lighter tone and crisper edge. An expanded version of he and Sato’s
excellent set from the festival was released as Sohsyoh (“Double
Crystal”) (Trio, 1973) and complete as Kairos (PJL, 2003).
Togashi, a percussionist and composer of immense subtlety and finesse, went
on to produce many impressive albums in the ensuing years in groups of all
sizes. His duo and trio recordings with Steve Lacy are particularly
recommended.
One musician who did not appear at the festival, due to hospitalisation,
was the saxophonist Kaoru Abe, a defining musician of the decade –
brilliant, volatile and self-destructive, whose paint-stripping alto could
also turn sweetly melodic. He first came to Soejima’s attention in February
1969, aged 19, when he saw him perform in a duo with drummer Hozumi Tanaka,
and was impressed with his fiery energy, like throwing knives at the
audience, two of whom were chatting until Abe stopped and shouted, “Hey
you, shut the fuck up and listen”. Soejima invited him to perform at New
Jazz Hall in a series of collaborations that were more often
confrontations. He played with guitarist Takayanagi, one of the few
musicians able to handle him, their first meeting lasting several hours
with no breaks, until Abe went blue in the face. There was only one release
from this short-lived duo during their lives, Deconstructive Empathy (Sound Creators, 1970), taken from their
concert in June 1970, “Projection for the Annihilation of Jazz” – these
guys didn’t mess about – an album which still sounds extraordinary: an
expression of something primary, almost pre-human, in which stable musical
space is replaced by a sound-world wrested from the release of psychic
energy, yet avoids disintegrating into chaos (just). Two albums of their
sets at Station '70 shortly thereafter were released by DIW in 2001: Mass Projection and Gradually Projection.
Abe was part of the Hangesha collective that recorded with Milford Graves ( Meditation Among Us (Kitty, 1977)) but on the subsequent tour he
stood facing Graves, blasting until the drummer gave up. “Milford quit
first, so he lost” Abe boasted on leaving the stage and was sacked for the
remainder of the tour. He also seemed to occupy another world when not
playing, explaining an absence as due to his involvement with a war in
Argentina, and once arrived at the Gaya jazz club dressed and made up as a
schoolgirl, complete with satchel. He would ring Soejima at 2.00 in the
morning, asking if it was possible to kill a person with sound,
conversations that would last until sunrise, and was addicted to sleeping
tablets, then pain killers – 3 would be left in the morning out of a bottle
of 100. They burnt a hole in his stomach, and he died at 7.35 on September
9, 1978 at the age of 29. The drummer Sabu Toyozumi, his duo partner for
the previous eighteen months, carried his body back to his apartment. Abe’s
wife, the writer Isumi Suzuki, took her own life eight years later.
There have been many posthumous albums of Abe’s music, mostly his sui generis solo concerts such as the various Live at Gaya and Live at Passe-Tamps CDs. The first
release after his death was Overhang-Party - A Memorial to Kaoru Abe (ALM-Uranoia, 1979), two
duo sets with Toyozumi from August 1978, and the most recent
Mannyoka
(NoBusiness, 2018) again, a pair of duo performances with Toyozumi from
Abe’s final year. Soejima wrote his own eulogy in the liner notes to Overhang Party: “Hardly any other sax players in history have
managed to get a tone that so matched their individuality”. Abe is a
difficult musician to assess: as a listener you either go with him all the
way or decide to do something else instead; like the man there are no
half-measures. He’s challenging, compelling, utterly uncompromising,
emotionally naked -- at its most potent, his playing has a purity of
purpose that acts as a direct transmission of feelings without intervention
– but also draining, erratic disturbing. At times it can be akin to
witnessing an exorcism. Abe may have accepted all this, taking the view
that for him there was no clear division between art and life, reaching for
everything and falling short was preferable to accepting limitations, and
that expressing the irreducible complexity of things cannot be achieved
without risk and perturbation. In 1970, in answer to a survey question,
“What are you trying to say?”, he responded:
“How to have a sound that stops all judgement. A sound that doesn’t disappear. A sound that weaves through all kinds of images. A sound that comes from both death and birth. A dying sound. A sound with presence. A sound that is forbidden forever. A sound that can’t be owned. The sound of going insane. A sound full of the cosmos. The sound of sound…”
A collection of scenes from
Koji Wakamatsu’s 1995 biopic of Abe, Endless Waltz, based on
Mayumi Inaba’s book of that name, accompanied by a searing account of
‘Lover, Come Back to Me’ by Abe and percussionist Yasukazu Sato, taken
from a recording made in a classroom at Tohoku University in 1971:
Akashia No Ame Ga Yamu Toki
(“As Acadia Rain Stops”) (Wax, 1997).
The Tiszán is a river that at one time flowed entirely within the borders
of the Kingdom of Hungary. It of course flows as it always has; only the
immaterial boundaries of human dominion have changed. It passes to the east
of the city of Senta, where composer Szilárd Mezei has lived all his life.
From there it merges with the Danube (Europe’s second longest river, which
passes to the south of Novi Sad, where Szilárd and many of his colleagues
perform and where this album was recorded) in the very heart of the
Vojvodina province, and then on some 1300 km to the Black Sea. Túl a Tiszán
Innen roughly translates to English as Beyond the Tiszán from Here
and is the name bestowed to Mezei’s ensemble dedicated to the union of
Hungarian folk, jazz, and classical music. For their third release
“Citromfa” or Lemon Tree, the 11 piece ensemble presents a 9 song,
2-disc set with a run time of just over two hours, every second of which is
filled with intriguing, exotic, and beautiful music. Using the themes of
traditional Vojvodinian folk songs as a foundation, Mezei extrapolates
remarkable arrangements from the simple melodies that extend and supplement
their underlying essence, elevating them to a higher level of sophisticated
expression. This advancement is enriched by the implausibly brilliant
musicians Mezei surrounds himself with. Joining Mezei on this release are
his long time colleagues, drummer István Csík and double bassist Ervin
Malina (who make up his trio), as well as the remainder of his Septet:
Bogdan Rankovic on bass clarinet, alto saxophone, and clarinet, Andrea
Berendika on flute and alto flute, trombonist Branislav Aksin, and Ivan
Burka on vibraphone and marimba. In addition the ensemble features Béla
Burány on baritone and soprano saxophones, violinists Tijana Stankovic and
Ákos Keszég, pianist Marina Marina Džukljev, and of course Mezei himself on
viola. This album was released late last year and I’ve been under its spell
since. The words have been slow to come to me, and so I do apologize for
the tardiness of this review. I’ve used the English translation of all the
song titles below with the intent of demystifying the content for our
non-Hungarian speaking readers.
After a brief introductory passage, the first track "A Young Herdsman from
Sándorházi" is centered on the sing-song melody of the original tune
superimposed over a piano/double bass ostinato. Berindika's flute playing
is beautiful here, fluttering over the surface like dragonflies darting
over a pond. Just as striking is Džukljev's piano, which along with the
rhythm section provides the beating heart of the piece. "Sour Cherry Grows
on High Trees" begins with the main theme sketched out in various shades of
contrasting timbre, the embellishments and counterpoint building as the
song unfolds. The complex inter-ensemble playing is grounded by the hearty
rhythm of the piece. The strings are more prominent here, as is Askin's
trombone, and we get a tasty solo from Malina on the double bass towards
the end. "Come with me to the Ball, My Sweet Darling" is a moody
arrangement that begins with a captivating bit of orchestral-tinted
potpourri. It plays out dramatically, with the soft, romantic passages
erupting into swells of harmony and bouncing rhythm from the full ensemble.
There is a particularly nice segment towards the middle where Rankovic's
bass clarinet wraps ribbons of reedy color around Džukljev's velvety piano
line. Burka's quavering vibraphone solo near the end is a gorgeous and
subtle touch. "My Chestnut Horse's Been Lost" retains the orchestral
feeling of the previous track, building up a forest of sound that is
haunted by Berindika's flute and Mezei's viola. Dramatically rendered but
much more somber than the previous track, it's perfectly placed in the
album's track sequence. The last piece on the first disc is called "A
Women-Ridiculing Song" and features a romping, ornery melody hovering on a
post-bop rhythm which is pocked with piano stabs and soft marimba. Rankovic
throttles his saxophone, yielding a fierce solo of fiery passion.
The second disc begins with "My Mother's Rose Tree" which is built around
an uplifting, regal melody that’s almost anthemic in its rendering. Csík
provides a rolling bed of uneven percussion for the folky strings and the
sparse, complementary piano. The ensemble takes turns soloing over this
foundation, where a single voice appears and is eventually overlapped and
overtaken by the next soloist. The saccharine theme is repeated in
intervals by the ensemble like a child returning to an unguarded cookie
jar. There is a brief section of group improvisation towards the conclusion
of the piece before the final statement of the main melody that imparts a
sense of totality and closure. “While the Betyár is Drinking at the Bar,
His Sweetheart is Crying in the Window” is a bellicose and animated beast
that juxtaposes melodious strands of folk melody with volatile, aggressive
playing from the ensemble. The piano passage is especially brooding,
finding Džukljev utterly attacking the keys. Burány delivers a terrific
solo on baritone sax, resplendent with assertive squelches and honks. The
next piece is a medley of descants, "Gosh! What a Bad Place This World
Is/When Sándor Rosza Gets on His Horse” and is my favorite piece of the
collection. It’s cinematic in its advance, building from the gentle
melancholy of flute, bass clarinet, and pizzicato string figures to several
swelling crescendos of exquisite orchestral airs. The combination of bass
clarinet, baritone sax, and trombone is a favorite of mine and provides a
thick bed of roiling thunder for the gentle showers of flute, strings, and
piano. Csík’s percussion is faultless and subtle; he illuminates the very
edges of their swirling sonic world with light rolls and whispering
cymbals. The solos on this piece are a particularly outstanding example of
how in-sync the ensemble is with Mezei’s arrangements. The piece sounds
like organic clockwork, the players in lockstep with the aspirations of the
maestro. The final piece of the collection, the eponymous “All the Twigs
and Leaves of the Lemon Tree” features another captivating piano ostinato
as the root, at times highlighted with flute, soft reeds, and brass. Mezei
and Csík summon beguiling solos that are both mellifluous and full of
dynamism, after which the ensemble closes the set with a multifaceted
flourish of symphonic verdigris.
Mezei’s sonic brew is intoxicating, and I haven’t been able to get enough
of it. This third double disc collection from the Túl a Tiszán Innen
Ensemble is a masterwork of infectious melody and intricate orchestration
(if you haven’t heard them I warmly endorse the other two collections as
well). This music is his own; it’s where he comes from and where he’s
going. Certainly there are allusions to the music of Bartók, Mingus,
Szabados (another artist underappreciated in the west), and Braxton but
they are mostly peripheral. Mezei’s work is singular in its constitution.
He’s a gifted artist, whose drive and passion is the equivalent of the
aforementioned masters, but who has emerged at a time when much of the
world’s cultural fixations have become moribund and oblivious. But like the
Tiszán, Mezei’s course will flow as it always has, towards his muses and
passions with determination and ambition; and for those so inclined, the
juice is well worth the squeeze. Highly recommended!
Danish, Copenhagen-based pianist-composer Søren Kjærgaard researched the
concept of Multi-layeredness in Solo Performance at the Rhythmic Music
Conservatory in Copenhagen in the years 2016-2018. During his research
project he has performed solo piano recitals and given talks on his
research in Tokyo, Oslo, San Francisco, Zürich and Copenhagen. This
research yielded two distinct solo piano albums.
Kjærgaard is known from his trio with double bass player Ben Street and
drummer Andrew Cyrille, which has recorded four albums, his work with Danish
multi-disciplinary artist Torben Ulrich (father of Metallica’s drummer Lars
Ulrich), which has born three albums, and his free-improvised performance
with Fred Frith, Koichi Makigami and Jakob Bro.
Concrescence was recorded at The Village studio, Copenhagen, on 14-15 July
2017, and offers 18 introspective, concentrated micro-cosmoses that unfold
in a dialogue between composition and improvisation, between concept and
the immediacy of the moment.
The short pieces point to the rich language Kjærgaard has developed and the diverse
influences that shape his aesthetics, ranging from the iconoclastic ideas
of Morton Feldman’s evocative minimalism, to the dense chord clusters of Henry
Cowell and the indeterminacy of John Cage, to the contemporary voices of
improvising, classical pianist Cory Smythe and contemporary composer Nico
Muhly, known for his collaborations with Björk, Grizzly Bear and Glen
Hansard.
Kjærgaard weaves these distinct attitudes into a rich and highly personal
thesis about the multi-layered potential of the solo piano format. He
employs conventional and extended techniques as a mean to suggest a
provocative yet subtle interplay between movements, speeds, textures and
dynamics, as well as between avant-garde, scholastic innovations and more
song-like but still experimental textures. Piece like the minimalist and
exotic “Precipitations”, the lyrical ballad “From Ornette To Sun Ra By Way
Of Miss Ann South” or the emotional homage to Cowell, “Bells for Henry,”
capture best Kjærgaard's idiosyncratic language.
Søren Kjærgaard - Live at Freedom Music Festival (Ilk Music, 2019) ****½
Live At Freedom Music Festival captures Kjærgaard performing at
KoncertKirken, Copenhagen, on September 1st, 2017. It focuses on six extended
improvisations, linked as a five movements suite, that explores a more
extroverted and contrast-full use of the piano.
The live format enables Kjærgaard to explore his deep interest in the
tension between different experimental approaches and techniques of playing
the solo piano, free-improvisation, and modern jazz. The “First and Second
Movement” investigates Feldman-esque expressive, ethereal, and almost silent
minimalism. “Third Movement” dives first deeper into the indeterminate,
chance-based compositional ideas of John Cage and David Tudor, but later
sketches basic rhythmic patterns. On these cerebral pieces Kjærgaard
investigates the sonic timbral qualities of the piano, attentive to the
singing potential of each tone.
The last shorter three movements - “Fourth” through “Sixth” - connect the
contemporary, experimental approaches with a great lineage of revolutionary
jazz pianists. The dense tone clusters of Henry Cowell sound as part of the
poetic aesthetics of Cecil Taylor and Paul Bley. The last, most lyrical and
emotional “Sixth Movement” converges best Kjærgaard’s imaginative,
spontaneous ideas of rhythmic flexibility, abstract minimalism and
cantabile melodicism.
