Rest in Peace Sensei Tetsu Saitoh (1955 - 2019)

Tetsu Saitoh, photo by Frank Schindelbeck

By Eyal Hareuveni 

On Saturday, May 18th, just before noon Japanese great double bass player Tetsu Saito passed away after a long battle with cancer. The self-taught Saitoh was born in Tokyo on October 27, 1955, and began playing the bass only when he was 22 years old. In the last three decades he became one of the prominent free improvisers in the Japanese scene, playing with such local heavyweights as sax player Kazutoki Umezu, drummer Sabu Toyozumi and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi. Soon he proved himself as one of an elite group of musicians who expanded the vocabulary of the double bass and kept innovating the extended techniques of playing the bull fiddle.

Bass aficionados may know Saito from his seminal collaborations with fellow bass masters - Joëlle Léandre (Joëlle Et Tetsu - Live At Yokohama Jazz Promenade Festival 1996, Omba, 1998), Barre Phillips and Nobuyoshi Ino (October Bass Tri-Logue, PJL, 2001), the homage to Peter Kowald with Phillips, Léandre and William Parker (After You Gone, Victo, 2004), the bass orchestra Bassmasse of Sebastian Gramss with Phillips, Achim Tang, Robert Landfermann, Ulrich Phillipp, ‎and many more (Schwarm, gligg, 2013) or the recent homage to another visionary bass player, Italian Stefano Scodanibbio, organized by Gramss, with Barry Guy, Mark Dresser, Phillips, and Léandre (Thinking of … , Wergo, 2014).

But Saitoh was more than a virtuous bass player and imaginative free improviser. He said that “a musician only needs to sing one song in life… I will always try to sing my own song”. But this statement reflected most his modest character; throughout his life, Saitoh sang many beautiful and expressive songs. His musical vision was truly free, genre-blind, brought faraway traditions to the present and encompassed compositional strategies and improvisational techniques from classical music, Spanish flamenco, Argentinian nuevo-tango, Brazilian choro, Japanese traditional folk music, Korean shamanic music and, obviously, jazz. He had worked with Butoh dancers and modern dancers - most well-known is his close friend Jean Laurent Sasportes (who has worked with Tanztheater Wuppertal directed by Pina Bausch), Noh theater actors, painters, poets and filmmakers. His works responded to current affairs as Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, that caused the meltdown of three reactors in Fukushima nuclear plant. No matter what kind of music he played, it was always his own. He always suggested new perspectives and nuances in his interpretations and his improvisations. If you want to experience his idiosyncratic, rich vision you may begin with his most beautiful, last solo album, Travessia (Travessia, 2016).

Saitoh understood music as the healing force of the universe in the deepest sense possible, long before he had to struggle with the symptoms of cancer that forced him to limit his activity. He saw music as a method to self realization, here and now, and free improvisation as one of the truest forms of such enlightening realization. But he was not bound to any kind of ideology or mysticism about his virtuous qualities. He was gifted by a profound knowledge how to connect people with music, manifested in his work with handicapped and disabled, most notably dancer Ryotaro Yahagi who became another regular collaborator. Everyone who knew Tetsu-san, even if only through his albums, DVD’s or correspondence with him, fell immediately in love with music, his uplifting energy, humble manners and his compassionate sense of humor. Once you knew him, he became a dear friend.

Saitoh had plans to perform solo and with friends for the coming months, but was open about his medical condition in his Facebook posts. He kept uploading video clips from recent performances as the last one in his youtube channel with another long-time comrade, sax player Michel doneda and traditional Japanese musician Shun'ichiro Hisada. Unfortunately, sensei Saitoh left us too soon, way too young. He will be missed.

Please visit Tetsu Saitoh website, Travessia: http://travessiart.com