The two faces of Natsuki Tamura

Japanese trumpeter Natsuki Tamura is a person with many aspects, including the two faces of two of his new albums. He can be very sweet, harmonic and gentle, as on with his Gato Libre band, but he can also be the wild adventurer, who dives deep into sounds and noise that was rarely heard before.

First Meeting - Cut The Rope (Libra, 2010) ****

First Meeting was created for this performance, although the band had a concept before they started playing. As Tamura writes in the liner notes : "We are definitely about noise, so there is plenty of BUSHAA, GUSHAA, GIGIGI, and GOBOGOBO for some time. But there are also a variety of beats, and even the occasional lovely harmony or melody". To avoid misunderstanding : the words in capitals are not samurai techniques, but sound imitations. The band consists of Natsuki Tamura on trumpet, Satoko Fujii on piano, Kelly Churko on guitar and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto on drums. Thte title track is wild and unrelenting noise, evolving from utter chaos towards an increasing intensity of such a level that it becomes strangely compelling. The second piece starts very minimalistic, with zen-like little sounds breaking the silence, evolving into a chatter of abrasive and scratching sounds, like some kind of rusty industrial machinery that has not been used for decades let alone oiled, coming back to live (by itself) and going totally haywire, but then it is calmed down by soothing tones of both piano and guitar. And indeed, this duality between attraction and repulsion, between familiarity and utterly new sonic experience works well, also on the other tracks, of which some even have melodic and also rhythmic moments.

Weird, strange things happen here, but they are worth listening to.This is the kind of music that I would have found horrible five years ago, but either my senses have become dull because of listening too much, or to the contrary more discerning. Anyway, it is great stuff for people with very open ears. Keep listening! It does not reach the level of his "Hada Hada" (I keep mentioning this album, I should review it once), but I love it.


Gato Libre - Shiro (Libra, 2010) ****½

Gato Libre is Tamura's incredibly powerful fusion between Spanish, Middle Eastern and European folk with jazz. In contrast to First Meeting, this is all about melody, harmony and traditional instrumental expressivity. With several unbelievable strengths : all the original compositions are of a sensitive, sweet and aesthetic beauty, and the delivery is absolutely stellar. Natsuki Tamura's trumpet is rich and expressive, full of melancholy and yearning, Satoko Fujii's accordion gives the right tonal background and precise touches, Kazuhiko Tsumura's acoustic guitar adds the sad and vigorous Spanish flavor and rhythm, and it is the perfect companion for trumpet and bass for the long unison phrases. Norikatsu Koreyasu's bass is always quite functional effective, yet more often than not adds the depth and warmth this music requires. Despite the more traditional approach, the warmth and cuddly factor, some of the pieces have sharp claws and long fangs. It is no surprise that the band is called Gato Libre, the "free cat".

This is world jazz at its best. It is not boundary breaking, but in its naive simplicity and traditional beauty, it is without a doubt the absolute best in the genre. The themes will keep playing in your head long after you've stopped listening to the album, and when you listen to it, again and again, you can only marvel at the precision and power of the performance.

And a kind of musical blend that you would not expect from a Japanese band, but then again, the world is our place, belonging to all of us.

Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo - Zakopane (Libra, 2010) 

If there is one contemporary musician that I hold in extremely high esteem, it's Japanese composer and pianist Satoko Fujii. As the uncivilised person that I am, I once told her that I did not really like her big band performances, while I forgot to mention that I do not like big band at all, with a few exceptions. My apologies for that.

For that reason I will not review this album, but I can recommend it to lovers of big band.

Satoko Fujii is the best!


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Fight The Big Bull - All Is Gladness In The Kingdom (Clean Feed, 2010) ***½

I am not a fan of big bands, even small big bands, yet there are some exceptions. Some of Charlie Haden's albums for instance, or Carla Bley's. And this one : Fight The Big Bull. The Band started with an excellent, but all too short "Dying Will Be Easy", also on Clean Feed, two years ago. For their second album, Fight The Big Bull, led by guitarist Matt White, is a little more expanded. The band consists of Jason Scott, JC Kuhl and John Lilley on reeds, Bob Millier on trumpet, Reggie Pace and Bryan Hooten on trombone, Cameron Ralston on bass, Brian Jones and Pinson Chanselle on percussion. Eddie Prendergast joins on electric bass on one track. The featured guest star, composer and arranger is trumpeter Steven Bernstein, known from his work on Tzadik, the Sex Mob, MOT.

On the upside, Bernstein is a great slide trumpeter and arranger.

On the downside, it gives the album the same distant veneer of all Bernstein's work : great exercises in style and genre, with lots of attention to the entertainment factor and a demonstration of prowess that basically drowns feeling and authenticity.

The first album lacked some of the complexity of this one, but it was so heart-rending, authentic and majestic, full of dark drama, tragedy and deep-felt anger, whereas here, the element of distant playfulness is introduced, and it reduces the listening experience to something more middle-of-the-road. The band is still great, the playing good, but the end result is less compelling. I wish they had continued their original concept.

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Andrea Centazzo & Joe Giardullo - The Way - Live In Woodstock

A born American and a naturalized American, both with Italian roots and a very personal approach to creative music, both have played music for over fourty years. Yet they never met, until this memorable evening in November of 2009, at the Sertso Studio in Woodstock. A big contrast is their musical output. Centazzo's run in the hundreds of records, Giardullo a little more than a dozen. That they met, is a gift from heaven, because these two albums are absolutely fantastic. The first one is a little better than the second one, but that's a very subjective evaluation.

One of Centazzo's greatest achievements in the past decade, is that he opened his musical universe into something quite unique and recognizable. It is not jazz, it is open-minded modern music, with an incredibly expansive feeling, something to be played in empty cathedrals or high up on a cliff near the sea at sunset, but then in a very adventurous and inventive manner (and not even close to new age or other cheap sentimentalists).

As a basically self-taught soprano saxophonist, Giardullo's sound is sometimes comparable to Steve Lacy, but he has learned rhythms and microtonal approaches in India, which shines through once in a while. His tone is warm and lyrical, with a kind of  in-built vulnerability which creates an immediate emotional depth, and if you listen to him here, the absolutely perfect companion to Centazzo's percussion.

The Way - Live In Woodstock One (Ictus, 2010) *****

The first album consists of eight pieces, each between four and seven minutes, all improvised. The common language both artists find is pretty impressive. Centazzo's minimal rhythms, and both men's use of silence and open space, allow them to play their notes and phrases with precision, without a hurry, yet accurate to generate the desired impact. The latter fits with Centazzo's theatrical, often dramatic approach, seeking the effect, making his bells and small percussion ring and rattle, or banging hard on his big drum, shaping contrast and perspective. Giardullo in the meantime remains quite restraint, never shouting, always singing, coloring his sounds, taking wild flights at time, yet never excessive.

The Way - Live In Woodstock Two(Ictus, 2010)****

Again, maybe this is just an impression I have, but the second CD is a little more gentle, less explicit in its delivery, less dramatic too, a little more meditative, with stretched notes, more space, moving higher up, into thin air, with a little less tension, yet remaining at the same high aesthetic level.

Both albums are worth having, and it's a little surprising that they weren't released as a double CD. It was one performance after all.


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William Parker - At Somewhere There (Barnyard, 2010) ****½

This is certainly not William Parker's first solo album, he already released "Lifting The Sanctions", "Testimony" and "Painter's Autumn", but this is the first one on which he doesn't play pizzicato, using his bow for the first and lengthy track, called "Cathedral Wisdom Light", on which he demonstrates the unbelievable riches that are hidden in his instrument : from the cry of whales to those of birds, over the pulsing or a heart, or just bone-chilling shrieks. He goes deep here, moving into real avant-garde territory, uncompromising, full of intensity and energy, often playing on several strings at the same time in the higher tonal ranges of his instrument, giving the impression of a wild string orchestra that is playing trance-inducing improvisations. Some of it is absolutely staggering, not only technically, but especially because of its emotional power. But he is sufficiently creative to add variations and new approaches, and to be frank, I've rarely heard him play in this manner, and I have dozens of his albums.

The two other pieces are not really pieces for bass. On the second "For Don Cherry", he plays one of the late trumpeter's side instruments, the dousn'gouni, an African guitar, accompanied by his singing, showing his spiritual side and love for the world. On the last piece, "For Ella Parker", he plays double flute. Both shorter tracks are fun, but they lack the depth and power of his magnificent almost 50-minute long first track, a piece which is by-the-way perfectly expressed by the artwork of the album. 

That track alone obviously makes this a very recommended album.

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Inhabitants - A Vacant Lot (Drip Audio, 2010) ****

This is the third album of this young Canadian band, a very rich and very welcoming one. Working on the boundaries of post-jazz and post-rock, the four musicians create instrumental music with lots of electronics and loops, while maintaining a strong rhythmic and melodic base. All the rest is improvisation, floating over the solid background, creating sonic textures and interactions. The band consists of Skye Brooks on drums and JP Carter on trumpet - both playing together in Fond Of Tigers, Pete Schmitt on bass and Dave Sikula on guitar. Rhythmically and harmonically, the music is closer to rock than to jazz, with a great emphasis on the total sound, rather than on the soloist's expressivity. That creates some emotional distance, but it makes the music not less inviting. The instrumental approach and the line-up is of course closer to jazz. The band finds a right balance between uptempo and slower, more meditative pieces, between composed elements, improvisations and creative inventions of the moment, between raw abrasiveness and subtle gentleness, developing a quite coherent and unique musical vision. Recommended to all but the hard-core free jazz fanatics.

I attach this Youtube clip for reference of the kind of music they play, but the quality is not by a long stretch comparable to the album (luckily!).



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Piano trios galore

Piano trios being one of the most popular line-ups in jazz, it is hard to keep up with all the new releases coming out, let alone give them the attention they deserve. I have not listened in-depth to all the albums below, but I ranked them in order of preference, which is also and indicator of their sense of adventure.

Sten Sandell Trio - Face Of Tokyo (PNL, 2010) ****½

Released on drummer Paal Nilssen-Love's own PNL label, the trio further consists of Sten Sandell on piano and Johan Berthling on bass. Recorded live in Japan in 2008, the album consists of two tracks: "Face Up", and "Face Down", for twice more than half an hour of quite intense musical explorations. The first track is a high energy work-out, the second starts with counter-rhythmic percussion, full of explosive power and creativity, Berthling joins on bass, first plucked, and when Sandell joins he moves to arco, while the pianist plays some eery chords, gradually driving up the tempo and energy level for again a dense improvisation, that suddenly collapses for some minimalist interaction, with all three musicians exploring the more uncommon aspects of their instruments. In stark contrast to some of the other albums below, the album demonstrates that technical mastery and musical vision make it possible to bring depth and emotional drive even with the most common of all jazz line-ups.

Dawn Of Midi - First (Accretions, 2010) ****½

"Dawn Of Midi" is something else. The trio, consisting of Qasim Naqvi from Pakistan on percussion, Aakaash Israni from India on bass, and Amino Belyamani from Morocco on piano, form, despite their different nationalities a really strong unit, playing minimalist open-ended improvisations, quite sensitive and/or intense, often eery, with unusual tempo changes and punctuation, very hypnotic, like waves lapping at the shore, retreating and coming back. Their stubborn focus on their quite special musical concept gives this album a fantastic coherence, something you listen to in one go, with all pieces fitting fitting perfectly into the whole. Wonderful free lyricism and suspense at the same time. The question is whether this will prove to be sufficient to go on this mode without becoming overly repetitive, but at least for one album, it's a sheer delight from beginning to end.

Listen from eMusic and Accretions.

Correction - Two Nights In April (Ayler, 2010)****

Moving from Norway to Sweden, here is trio with Sebastian Bergström on piano, Joachim Nyberg on bass, and Emil Åstrand-Melin on drums. The eleven tracks were recorded live on two sessions in April 2009, hence the not-so-creative title. The music is creative by contrast, but uses all the jazz ingredients, from bop to more free and minimalist influences, mixing it all together in a great stew full of unexpected flavors and texture. As Mats Gustafsson keeps repeating in the liner notes : these guys listen to each other, which allows them to shift and change things in a whim, understand where the other ones are going, and join telepathically. The musicians keep the pieces relatively short, which is a good idea, because the compactness leads to focus leads to intensity leads to a story to tell. In this way they don't overplay their hand, and demonstrate through the quantity of the pieces what they have in store. And that's a lot.

 Listen and buy from Ayler Records.

Curtis Clark Trio - Táági (NoBusiness, 2010) ***½

Pianist Curtis Clark teams up with the González brothers, Aaron on bass and Stefan on drums.On each piece Clark sets the tone, by long solo introductions on the piano, often quite bluesy in approach, then opening the improvisation for the two brothers, who join full of enthusiasm. Clark's compositions are lyrical and gentle, meditative almost, and are actually in stark contrast to the brothers' usual approach, which is more creative and boundary-breaking, whether in Yells At Eels or the punk bands they've played in. That being said, they acquit themselves well in this new environment, sometimes even pushing Clark into more adventurous territory, when "Water Colors" evolves into "New York City Wildlife". It is nice, post-boppish, but not essential.

Eri Yamamoto - In Each Day, Something Good (Aum Fidelity, 2009) ***

 Moving away from the improvisations above, the excellent pianist Eri Yamamoto with her long-time collaborators David Ambrosio on bass and Ikuo Takeuchi on drums. The music is the accompaniment for a silent movie "I Was Born, But ...", made in 1932 by Yasujiro Ozu, one of Japan's best movie directors. That being said, the music does not ressemble the period of the movie, and it can just stand on its own as nice post-bop, sometimes bluesy, but always very lyrical and performed with subtlety.

Listen from eMusic.

Frank Kimbrough - Rumors (Palmetto, 2010) ***

Also not entirely my preferred genre, but incredibly good within a more mainstream genre, is the new Frank Kimbrough trio, with the leader on piano, Masa Kamaguchi on bass, and Jeff Hirshfield on drums. The skills and the mature inventiveness drip from every note, in the style of Paul Bley and Keith Jarrett in the seventies. So nothing innovating or new, just laid-back quality.

Listen and download from Palmetto.

Espen Eriksen Trio: You Had Me At Goodbye (Rune Grammofon, 2010) 

Back to Norway for the last CD, with the debut album of the Espen Eriksen trio, with Eriksen on piano, Lars Tormod Jenset on bass, and Andreas Bye on drums. A worthwhile first album, but a little too mellow for my taste, with a little too explicit themes and approaches. These guys seem too young to play such unadventurous music. But I leave the appreciation to you.

Listen and download from eMusic.


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Peter Van Huffel Quartet - Like The Rusted Key (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2009) ****

I saw this young quartet perform in less than optimal circumstances, in a pub with over two hundred students totally uninterested in the band performing, probably considering them nothing more than background noise to their chats. The four musicians are Berlin-based Canadian altoist Peter Van Huffel, pianist Jesse Stacken, bassist Miles Perkin and drummer Samuel Rohrer, and all four extremely rich in their skills and versatility. They feel as easily at home in pieces with composed themes as they are on total improvisations. "Drift" starts hesitatingly but evolves into a nice theme and strong improvisations, "Tangent" has a great rhythmic drive, a strong unison theme, allowing for great staccato accentuations, then stopping abruptly for an alto solo intermezzo that tears the piece to pieces, and even if the band re-joins, it does seem to get off the ground again, but of course the great theme builds up momentum again to come to its finale. "Enghavevej" is more joyful, "Excerpt Two" is more minimalist, "Backward Momentum" another beauty of composed interplay, "Melancholic" is driven by the slowest piano chord progression ever heard, making it fun and sensitive at the same time, "Beast II" is dark and menacing. The compositions are strong, the voices rich, the sound pallette broad and deep. This music goes well beyond mainstream because of its sometimes raw delivery, wild improvisations, deconstructionist attitude, but the careful attention to themes, structures and arrangement keep the music relatively accessible. This is clever and intense music.

Watch "Excerpt Two"


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Sei Miguel - Esfingico (Clean Feed, 2010) ****½

The album's subtitle, "Suite For A Jazz Combo", is somewhat misleading in the sense that the word "jazz" is too limitative for the music you can hear on the album, nor is the word "combo" the right one either, since you rarely hear all musicians play together. The band consists of Sei Miguel on pocket trumpet, Fala Mariam on alto trombone, Rafael Toral on modulated resonance feedback circuit, Pedro Laurenço on bass guitar, Cesár Burago on timbales and small percussion.

The music is minimalist, soft (as the opposite of loud), consisting of a very open canvas of precise coloring with sparse notes, slowly revealing structures and rhythms as they move along. There is forward movement, the result of agreed structures and possibly compositional elements. It took me a while and many listens to get into the music, but the end result is very rewarding. If present, the rhythm changes are varied, unusual yet compelling, Miguel's clarity of tone is a pleasure to hear, and so is Mariam's trombone. Laurenço's bass-playing is also more sonic than rhythmic, adding textural depth and emphasis. The electronics are restrained and functional, driving the music forward, feeding it back, without being too intrusive. A weird but very enjoyable sonic environment is the end result, carefully crafted, full of emotional tension and opening new directions for music in a clever and creative way. Enjoy!

Buy from Instantjazz.

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Dennis González Band Of Sorcerers - Live In Washington D.C. (Daagnim, 2009) ****

Dalles trumpeter Dennis González describes in the liner notes how a cassette tape of this unique performance that took place in Washington on 7 October 1989, suddenly turned up, and, even if the sound quality is "rough and raw", and even "though the music is cut off in the middle of bassist Carter Mitchell's solo", it was still worth releasing in honor of the late tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe. González was at that time trying to set up his American "Sorcerers" quartet, in analogy with his European band. Reggie Nicholson plays drums, and Wilber Morris would have been the bass player on this gig, but he fell ill and had to be replaced by Mitchell at the last minute. Anyhow, this is free bop in the best tradition: rhythmic, fierce, expansive, spiritual, lyrical, more in the Coltrane than in the Coleman tradition, but indeed, I can only agree with González: this is a great find. Lowe is excellent, but so are González, Mitchell and Nicholson. Nice!

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Blastula - Scarnoduo (Amirani, 2010) ****

As you know, I am not a fan of vocals in jazz, but once in a while a record pops up that proves me wrong. This is an example in case (and a strong one), with Cristiano Calcagnile on drums and percussion, and Monica Demuru on voice, and occasionally also mouth harmonica and glockenspiel. The duo goes deep, very deep, intense in the interaction, physically giving themselves fully, but their reach is wide too: from childlike singing to avant-garde grotesque, with poetry, folk, world and everything in between. Knowing my aversion of the genre, I can tell you that it is absolutely stunning at times, with the following highlights : "Nanneddu Meu", a powerful and highly rhythmic dialogue, "La Porta, Marnie!", a serene and meditative breeze, "Mangia La Tua Paura", a children's song evolving into nightmare and back, "Sa Calarina E Mosche Sugli Occhi", an almost classical piece turning into avant-garde and farm animals sounds, a kind of reverse evolution. The pieces are interspersed with short fun melodies. You could argue that all the different angles of attack diminish the album's coherence, you could also argue that the music reflects life itself, in all its contradictory approaches, full of drama and opposing sentiments.

The album comes with art work of the same high level, little cards with the Italian poetry or lyrics. Knowledge of the language may help to fully appreciate the performance, but it's not a necessity to enjoy it.

A must for fans of the genre. Recommended to everyone else.

You can buy and download the music and artwork here for just 6€.

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