Chick Corea - The Leprechaun at 75

Last June Chick Corea turned 75 and the famous Blue Note club in New York is celebrating the prominent composer, pianist, band leader with a series of nightly concerts between October 19 and December 11. On November 6, as I had meetings in New York the following days, I decided to go one day early and took the Delta Shuttle from the Washington Reagan National airport to La Guardia on the Sunday afternoon with barely time to stop by my Midtown hotel, take the 6 train down to the Village and walk over to the West Side to meet my friend Alan and his kids Emma and Ian at the club. We arrived early to secure good seats at the bar from where we would have an unobstructed view of the stage.

The Chick Corea series at the Blue Note celebrates the many faces of Chick Corea and features a broad cross section of the different combos he’s led and played with, including his famous Elektric Band, acoustic quartets and quintets, piano duets with Herbie Hancock, Brad Mehldau and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, two evenings with Gary Burton and the Harlem String Quartet, another two evenings with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, an evening with John McLaughlin (his partner from Miles’ Bitches Brew album), ending with four nights of Return to Forever meets Mahavishnu. Corea’s versatility and scope are indeed amazing.

 Over the past few decades I’ve caught Corea in various formats, starting with his 1970s performance at the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland with the original Return to Forever band. This was pure magic to me. Corea had previously worked with Miles Davis on a number of electric albums, which were path breaking in their hypnotic psychedelia. He had also made his own music in a more traditional piano trio format (his 1968 Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, featuring Roy Haynes and Miroslav Vitous, was a breakthrough). But the new band was something entirely different, something that no-one else had done before. It featured Corea on a Fender Rhodes, Joe Farrell on the flute and soprano sax, Stanley Clarke on bass and Airto Moreira on drums and percussion. Their regular singer, Airto’s wife, Flora Purim had just had a baby and was replaced by a less impressive male singer, but this hardly mattered. The band played music from their eponymously titled first album, which I had recently purchased and had hardly listened to anything else since then. Stanley Clarke was barely out of his teens then, but his work on the big bass was amazing and his interplay with Airto – unusually behind a regular drum kit beating a flat ride cymbal – made the music soar light as a feather (the title of their yet-to-come second album). I was just a kid, sitting on the floor in front of the stage in Pori Theater, and I was totally mesmerized (I can still remember the feeling). I could not imagine anything more beautiful than the ringing sounds of the flute and the Rhodes conjuring exotic soundscapes.

The last time I saw and heard Chick before this latest night was a couple of years ago at New York City’s Highline Ballroom, that time with an acoustic trio featuring Brian Blake and Christian McBride. This more conventional setting was anything but, as the three innovators created new music on old instruments. I was also there one night for the master’s 70th birthday celebration, also at the Blue Note. That evening the band featured Hubert Laws, the amazing flautist who was one of my greatest idols in my teen years.

This time it was the Leprechaun Band, named after the 1976 album. The band featured two other legends in addition to the maestro: Eddie Gomez on bass and Steve Gadd on drums. They had a frontline of three horns: Steve Wilson, Michael Rodriguez and Steve Davis. As per the commemorative program booklet, the evening found them “reimagining the game-changing music from The Leprechaun, My Spanish Heart and The Mad Hatter.” These three were among my all-time favorite Corea albums (although it’s hard to say, as most of them are excellent). Chick himself was in superb form alternating between acoustic and electric pianos and synthesizers (no Rhodes, though). He remains as boyish as ever and it would be hard to believe him to be his age.

Apart from his trombone, Steve Davis was in charge of the horn section, which worked together perfectly. Michael Rodriguez played crisp trumpet, although there was a debate between Alan and Ian about the merit of his solos, with the son defending Rodriguez’ work against some skepticism from his father. No-one could disagree, however, that some of the most beautiful solos were produced by Steve Wilson. Again, I was enthralled by his flute work. Where does Corea find all these stunning flutists? As a flute player myself, I have always appreciated the prominence Chick Corea gives to the instrument in his compositions.

Some of the most memorable pieces included ‘Friends’ from The Mad Hatter and ‘Reverie,’ a ballad that featured a gorgeous alto sax lead by Steve Wilson and beautiful unison work by the three horns. The set ended with a rendition of Pino Daniele’s ‘Sicily.’ This was a lovely homage to the wonderful Italian musician, composer and singer who passed away only last year at the age of 59. Needless to say, the audience that packed the Blue Note did not relent before an encore. And we got an incredible treat: ‘Spain’ as a duet between Chick and Steve Gadd. This, perhaps the most famous composition by Chick Corea, now performed only on grand piano and drums sent us to the cold New York City night radiating heat from the inside.

Tokyo to New York @ Spectrum, June 2, 2013

On this hot and muggy first Sunday of the summer I took myself across the Williamsburg Bridge to Lower East Side to cool down with contemporary music. As I was early, I took a walk around the block. On the next block on Orchard Street there was a street fair with many stalls selling food and other stuff. All of the many bars had their fronts open and thirsty customers were sitting with their beer mugs observing the procession of scantily clad denizens on the street.

At Spectrum on Ludlow Street the atmosphere was much more subdued. A couple of dozen people had gathered in the long and dark living room where a stage was established at the far end. The side walls were lined with bookshelves. On the right side, they were filled with books; the left side was covered by thousands of CDs. I sat down on a comfortable black sofa next to the CDs and took a long sip of the aloe mango juice I had bought on the street. The occasion was a concert—Tokyo to New York—displaying new music by Japanese and American composers. The performance featured music by more than 20 contemporary composers ranging in age from early-20s to mid-80s. There were three musicians—Thomas Piercy, Mika Tanaka and Elizabeth Brown—performing on Western and Japanese instruments. The secret behind the darkness in the room turned out to be that the music was combined with a show of photographs arranged by Christina Boers projected on the back wall.

The first segment of the concert started with a solo piece ‘Mienai Sakebigoe’ on hichiriki written and performed by Piercy. This moved on to a piece by Masatora Goya, ‘Toro Nagashi’, which had Tanaka join the hichriki, playing delicate ornaments on the piano. Hichiriki, a Japanese double reed instrument used traditionally in ancient gagaku court music, has a flexible pitch and a nasal sound vaguely reminiscent of oboe. With Piercy switching to clarinet, the duo performed a U.S. premier of a piece by Akira Uchida, the soothing and hauntingly beautiful ‘New Moon’. This part of the concert ended with a hectic piece by Katsuhiro Oguri called ‘Movement 2012’ (also a U.S. premier, like several of the tunes following), depicting the chaos of New York City traffic. The photographs that accompanied it were on the same topic. The first theme of the piece culminated in a climax with a long high tone from the clarinet matching a photograph of a black man showing an equally piercing middle finger. This launched Tanaka into an atonal boogie on the piano, which appealed to my jazz sensibilities.

After the duo finished their frantic performance, Elizabeth Brown followed with a shakuhachi solo from her own Isle Royale suite. This one was ‘Loons’, a serene piece of beautiful work for the vertical bamboo flute.

The second segment of the concert featured eleven short pieces by as many composers drawn from a series of more than 50 commissioned one-minute works under the title ‘Nihon no Shiten’. The composers were Armando Ayala, Greg Bartholomew, John Bilotta, Andy Cohen, Douglas DaSilva, Andrew Davis, Jim Fox, Michael Frazier, Nina Sinakova, Daniel J. Thompson and David Wolfson. They varied between lyrical and quirky.

Another interlude followed with Brown playing another part of her bird-themed suite, ‘Black-throated blue warbler’. I have heard her play parts of the suite before in an earlier concert and can appreciate the beauty of the nature-inspired music that utilizes the unique timbre of the bamboo. The shakuhachi is a difficult instrument (Elizabeth and I talked about it briefly before the concert agreeing that it made the Western flute feel simple and straightforward) but she has established a beautiful sound and command of the instrument.

The final part of the concert started with Mika Tanaka playing her own solo composition, ‘In the Garden’, a lovely but not a radical tune. Then followed five duo pieces:  ‘YUU’ by Yohei Kurihara, ‘Sketch from Japan’ by Kazushi Iwaoka, ‘You’ by Mieko Ishii, ‘Old Men Waltz’ by Yoshihiko Banno, and ‘Space’ by Kyoko Yamaguchi. I particularly enjoyed Iwaoka’s ‘Sketch’, which utilized alternately Japanese and Western scales seamlessly contrasting the two modes. ‘Old Men Waltz’, a melancholy atmospheric piece was to me one of the high points of the afternoon. Its theme referred to the inevitability of old men waltzing away from the scene, making way to younger men; an inevitability understood by both the young and the old.

The final piece of the concert, ‘Amalgam – A’ by Hifumi Shimoyama was very interesting because it brought together shakuhachi, clarinet and piano producing very unique, surprising tonalities. Piercy explained how he had visited Shimoyama at his home in Tokyo. The composer lives in a modern high rise. When you enter his apartment, to the left is a highly modern, stylish living space, while on the right you enter into a traditional Japanese abode. This dichotomy is also evident in his music.

Meanwhile, on the sweltering street the Lower East Side was alive. Although the sun was not yet setting, there were lines to venues with live music of a different variety as I headed towards the subway on Delancey. I was glad that I had cooled off the afternoon at the Spectrum where I had been both stimulated and calmed down.

Sandy farewell

Monday, 29 October 2012

On Monday morning New York City is closed down. I’m staying at home as my office, like most others, has been forced shut. Without transportation it would anyway be impossible to get to Manhattan. It doesn’t look too bad outside, though. It’s grey and the rain is falling, but it all looks rather calm. The wind comes in gusts that violently shake the trees outside. Some leaves have already turned yellow and are flying off like wet rags.

By noon the situation is starting to look more serious. According to the reports, the storm has been moving faster than anticipated and therefore has arrived earlier than expected. Its power has intensified. There’s by now no doubt this’ll be the worst storm to hit New York since the 1938 hurricane. The TV shows images from Atlantic City, NJ. The famous boardwalk and the casinos are being pounded by heavy winds and the waves from the open ocean are splashing forcefully onto the shore. I remember my brother has a vacation property on the Brigantine Island not far from Atlantic City. I also remember it faces the ocean. There’s only the sandy beach and a narrow street between the building and the Atlantic. In good weather, the location is lovely.

I correspond with my colleague Chona who lives in New Jersey. She is lamenting the pictures of her beloved Jersey Shore being eaten up by the waves. The TV meteorologist explains how New York City is squeezed in between New Jersey and Long Island, which means that in an Atlantic storm situation like today, the water has only one way to go: inland towards the city via the inlets. Therefore, the storm surge forecast for New York harbour is grim.

The most threatening situation starts unfolding in mid-afternoon on the west side of Manhattan. A crane on a high-rise construction site on the 7^th Avenue at 57^th Street has collapsed and is hanging upside-down at the height of the 90^th floor above the city. There is no way to stabilize it, so it’ll be pure luck if it stays up and doesn’t fly smashing into neighbouring buildings and onto the street.

Around 4 pm Governor Andrew Cuomo holds another press conference flanked by NYFD and other emergency personnel. A troop of National Guardsmen dressed in camouflage uniforms stands guard behind them. There is a life-threatening situation on Fire Island, a thin barrier island off Long Island. Fourteen people who refused to obey the mandatory evacuation order last night had to be rescued today. Having spent some good summer vacation time on the island, I can’t even imagine anyone wanting to face a hurricane on that thin sliver of sand in the Atlantic. In the process a rescue vehicle has been lost. Luckily there were no personnel losses. Cuomo quotes Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who accused people who refused to leave of being selfish, putting others at peril. The emergency chief tells in no uncertain terms that the window to evacuate is rapidly closing. Sandy is now expected to make landfall around 18:00, which will coincide with the peak of the tide coming in. When that happens, it won’t be possible to get out of the islands that surround New York City.

I also correspond with my other colleague Indran who lives high up in one of the high-rises on the East River waterfront in Manhattan. It is Zone A, but the building complex is very solid and the water would anyway never reach that high up, so he had chosen not to evacuate. He and his family moved here from South Africa only earlier this year. They are awed by the storm which they can observe through rattling windows from a vantage point tens of stories above sea level.

Our building is faring well, too. We stay in our warm apartment and enjoy the food we stocked up on before the storm: steaks and asparagus for lunch, followed by coffee ice cream; grilled chicken and salad for dinner. Do we normally eat this well? Nowa sleeps through much of her first hurricane. I go down to the basement, which looks dry—so far. 

Around the time of the landfall, I venture out briefly to snap these photographs. From the balcony the southwestern sky looks menacing. On the street side, the large trees are bending with the gale force winds. Luckily, the rain remains surprisingly moderate.

In early evening, the communications start to falter. The cable network on which our building depends on for the Internet, TV and telephone landline goes dark. The elevator also becomes unsafe to use. We’re cut off from information and communications. Well almost, as Yoko’s iPhone can still send and receive messages (my older model went blank). Some neighbours in the building report water leaking from their a/c vents. Apparently, water is also starting to gather in the basement.

Around 21:30, Yoko reads on the iPhone that Sandy is no longer a hurricane. The National Hurricane Centre has reclassified it because it “has continued to lose tropical characteristics”—no wonder at these latitudes. It doesn’t mean that its power is waning. Sustained winds of more than 120 km per hour remain. The wind and rain continue late into the night.

Tuesday, 30 October

We survived the storm with minor personal inconvenience. In the morning the winds are still high and there are heavy showers. At the JFK airport, top wind speeds recorded were 127 kph. Our cable service is restored and we never experienced a power outage. Not everyone was equally lucky. The storm left some 7 million people in 11 states and the District of Columbia without power. In New York, power outages are widespread and currently 1.8 million people are without power. In the New York University Langone Medical Centre even the back-up generator system failed. Some 260 patients, including four newborn babies, had to be evacuated.

ConEdison, the power utility, made a statement that this is the biggest storm-related problem in the company’s history. A representative couldn’t give a timetable for fixing the problems but suggested it may take a week to fully restore the service. It's going to be a cold and dark week for those affected. 

The initial reports by the police talk about seven Sandy-related deaths in the city, but there is no information about how these happened. The national death toll from Sandy is currently put at 16. According to news reports, more than 80 homes have burned down to the ground in a fire in Breezy Point, Queens, due to electric fires. One can imagine insurance companies studying the hurricane causes in the policies for loopholes to avoid payment to the home owners. A building in Chelsea collapsed partially because of the wind. The crane in Midtown West is still hanging there, but the situation remains dangerous and the police have evacuated buildings in the neighbourhood.

There is massive flooding around the city. The National Hurricane Centre recorded storm surges of up to 3.8 metres in Kings Point. The storm surge in southern Manhattan’s Battery at 4.3 metres, was the highest ever on record, beating that caused by Hurricane Dana in 1960. In the South Street Seaport waves with a height of 9 metres were measured. Residents on Staten Island report that they have never seen anything like this. Coney Island waterfront is still inaccessible even to eager reporters. Streets look like rivers with cars floating on them. Cars have been crushed under felled trees. One car spontaneously combusted in a fireball, possibly caused by salt water getting into its battery. A huge tanker has washed ashore on Staten Island.

Reports are coming in and are being updated as more information becomes available. The economic impact has not yet been assessed.

The system-wide shutdown of mass transit—both local and long distance trains, subways, buses, ferries—continues. Seven subway tunnels are severely flooded. One can only imagine the hordes of rats sprinting across the debris in the deluge. Apparently MTA had managed to get all subway cars on higher ground in anticipation of the storm, so the trains have been spared damage. MTA calculates it’ll take four days to pump out the water from the tunnels. The rain continues to fall.

It seems that we’ll spend some more time indoors.

Waiting for Sandy

Sunday evening, October 28^th

Sandy is again a hurricane. Having already once been downgraded into a tropical storm, Sandy is back as Category 1 hurricane—and it’s heading north along the Atlantic coast. The storm system is slow-moving and massive, ranging some 1,200 km across. The eye is still far out on the Atlantic off the Carolina coast some 800 km from New York, but despite the distance, the winds are picking up even here in Brooklyn. The rain is starting to fall and the Rockaway shore is already getting soaked. The hurricane is calculated to make landfall well south of New York tomorrow night and is expected to pass the metropolitan area south-southwest from here across the garden state of New Jersey.

Although New York will likely not be hit directly, the expectation is that the city will receive its share of rain and wind. In fact, the biggest threats would appear to stem from wind and the associated storm surge. The rainfall on Monday-Tuesday is expected to be just 50-120 mm—enough to give us a good washing, but not huge in historical terms. However, by noon tomorrow, the winds are expected to blow at 80 km per hour, with gusts going up to 112 km per hour. That’s strong enough to fell trees and power lines and to throw leisure boats off the East River on the banks.

This afternoon we walked down from our house to Bedford Avenue and the main shopping area of Williamsburg to get supplies so that our daughter Nowa would be able to ride out her first hurricane in comfort. It should have been no surprise, but we were still taken aback at seeing how many others had had the same idea. There were crowds of people in all shops and at least three dozen people were queuing on the pavement outside our favourite supermarket. Two bouncers were admitting people in an orderly manner, so that inside the store things didn’t get too chaotic. After a brief wait we were able to stock up with enough of bottled water and cooking ingredients should we be unable to shop for a few days.  It is interesting to note the types of items that people buy in these kinds of situations. Apart from bottled water, the first things to go seem to include canned tuna. This I noticed 14 months ago when we were bracing for Hurricane Irene, and could reconfirm today. As we headed back home, we could feel the humidity condensing in the cool wind.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been visible in the media today assuring people of the state of preparedness. All public transportation—subway, local trains, buses, ferries—will be shutting down tonight. The area airports—JFK, La Guardia and Newark—have also instructed flights to be directed elsewhere and  Amtrak trains will be avoiding New York’s Penn Station. The bridges and tunnels connecting the five Boroughs may be closed up to avoid accidents caused by heavy winds or flooding. New York will be cut off from the world.

The decisive Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacuation of all vulnerable low-lying areas on the coastline by 7 pm tonight. Zone A—which includes most of the shores of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island—may be facing huge storm surges. The forecast at this time is mostly 1-2 m above normal—high in its own right—but some areas around East and Hudson Rivers—and especially Long Island Sound—may face a storm surge of up to 1.8-3.3 metres. It’s almost full moon, which worsens the effects as the tides are naturally high at this time.

While the city hurricane shelters are slowly filling up, many citizens are also planning on challenging the evacuation orders and riding out the storm. The local TV station NY1 sometime ago broadcast a report from the Rockaways where some of the 130,000 people living there were gathering for hurricane parties. A somewhat wobbly gentleman declared firmly through a nearly toothless grin that he would not leave his home of 35 years: “The captain must go down with his ship!” True to his style, Mayor Bloomberg justifies the mandatory evacuations, not because of his concern for the stubborn residents, but because their intransigence may eventually put rescue personnel at risk if they need to go out to salvage foolhardy partyers from storm hit areas. He also made a decision to shut down elevators and hot water in public housing—many tall high-rises—to prevent people from getting stuck in elevators and other mishaps if and when there are power failures.

This is not the first time New York City will experience a hurricane, although they certainly are not regular events. By definition, hurricanes are tropical storms, and New York is far from tropical, as anyone having spent a winter here would attest. However, just last year, in August 2011, the city was hit by another hurricane, Irene. It was the first since Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The one before that had been Agnes in 1972. Whether this repeat just a year later would be any indication of intensified storm activity linked with climate change is of course impossible to tell. Two events in a row don’t provide any statistically significant trend. The most destructive hurricane that New York has had to deal with in modern times took place in 1938 when the eye of a Category 3 storm passed straight through Long Island killing ten people. Damage from Irene last year stayed quite limited, although much of Lower Manhattan—the Financial District and the Battery—were severely flooded. Even then, the Far Rockaways took the brunt of the storm that damaged the piers and boardwalks there. Here in Williamsburg, the visible damage was limited to some flooded basements and a few felled trees (see the photos from the aftermath of Irene).

 

Sandy is different, though. It’s been termed ‘storm of a generation’ to reach this far up on the East Coast. Last week, it already killed at least 60 people and caused large-scale homelessness in the Caribbean. President Barack Obama has just signed an emergency declaration for New York State in anticipation of Sandy’s arrival.

For now, we are tucked in comfortably in our apartment in Williamsburg. We are close to East River, but just outside of Zone A by virtue of our building standing on a small knoll. It will not prevent the winds from rocking the windows here on the 4^th floor or preventing flooding in the basement storage areas. But all the plants have been moved inside from the balconies. We expect to stay safe and dry, although the thick clouds hide the full moon and the wind is increasingly throwing raindrops our way..

Japanese Spirit and Music

The performance on the Sunday night, August 26, was entitled 'Japanese Spirit and Music - Voice, Shakuhachi and Shinobue.' The concert featured two Japanese music duos (with additions). It was held at the Michiko Rehearsal Studio close to New York’s Times Square. A somewhat unusual place, but very functional for the purpose, once one managed to get there through the tourist crowds on Times Square.

The first pairing was Nobuko Miyazaki and Emi Inaba. The set started with a solo shinobue, a Japanese transverse bamboo flute, by Miyazaki. She was soon joined by Inaba, a proficient pianist and composer, for a set of tunes that had all been composed by one these young ladies. The first one, on which Miyazaki played the Western flute, left me wondering whether this would be a concert of romantic but somewhat meaningless semi-classical pieces played by two good musicians. I was proven wrong, luckily, as the pace changed rather quickly afterwards. The next piece, Echo, an Inaba composition, was already quite different and quite fun! It immediately demonstrated Inaba’s compositional talents.

The following piece was hers, too, Traveller. The musicians explained how they had met nine years ago in London where Inaba had been a student of composition; how she had wanted to write a piece to play with her friend: and how she had asked about the shinobue and its scales in order to know how to write for the unusual instrument. In fact, playing shinobue or any other traditional bamboo flute with a piano with its fixed tuning is a challenge to the flutist This turned out to be one of the highlights of the performance, a tune with a beautiful theme, followed by changing dynamic and rhythmic patterns. The pianist played some complex yet attractive patterns involving both hands, first in octaves, then in harmonies, which the flute followed. The piece, as the one that followed it, was an enchanting mix of Japanese and jazz sensibilities. Despite these clear jazz influences, all of the music appeared written through with no improvisational elements.

A solo piano piece confirmed Inaba’s skills both as a pianist and, primarily, as a composer. Again, the tune moved dynamically between a sweet and harmonious beginning and an innovative and strong middle before returning to the original melody.

On March 11, 2011, Japan was struck by a tsunami that destroyed a stunning amount of the coastline and killed some 15,000 people. Nobuko Miyazaki told the audience how she had visited the devastated area in Iwate just a couple of weeks ago. She had then composed the tune that was played next as a prayer dedicated to those who perished in the disaster. It was a beautiful piece played on the shinobue, with some powerful inputs from the pianist. The set ended with another jazzy piece by Emi Inaba.  All in all, a nice performance, which was hard to pigeonhole: just two clearly very talented musicians trying to balance their act between Western and Japanese music.

None of this ambiguity was present when Emme and Akihiko Obama performed. In fact, Obama started their part of the event with a classical Japanese shakuhachi solo piece, Daha. He played it with a jinashi shakuhachi, a longer version of the classic Japanese bamboo flute with a deep sound. He switched to a shorter flute when Emme joined him (he would use five different flutes of varying lengths throughout the performance, so I won’t get into that anymore). This was an innovative version of a minyoo, a Japanese folk song arranged for just voice and shakuhachi. After the first song together, the couple proceeded to play Edo no komoriuta, a beautiful lullaby from Old Edo before it became Tokyo. The version—again just by voice and the bamboo flute—contained some amazing interplay between the musicians. It takes some out-of-the-box thinking when in the arrangements for a voice-shakuhachi duet the rhythm would be provided by the singer!

The next piece, Splendour of Sound, was honestly cooking, with Emme adding some African colour and rhythm with a thumb piano. Obama provided some inventive lines while Emme got into singing in the complex traditional nagauta style.

In Aoi Tsubame, Shu Odamura joined in with a guitar. He had to wait for a lengthy moment while Emme sang the theme unaccompanied by any other instrument—she is just fantastic, her confidence based on the absolute command of her voice and the genre—before he was able to join in. He started with an atmospheric solo, followed by a sequence in which he and Emme interplayed in an almost bossa nova –like style.

The piece led seamlessly into another one, starting with a guitar-shakuhachi duet with interesting improvisational exchanges. Suddenly, Emme joined and inserted some very potent vocals into the slowly building music. This piece contained some of the most intensive playing of the evening, with a searing shakuhachi solo by Obama.

At the end, all of the musicians present got together for a fun Japanese tune, Zakiyaki, which Emme instructed the audience to participate in (which we did by clapping our hands and joining in the catchy refrain). This was a very engaging and fun moment, with Miyazaki and Inaba joining the rest of the musicians on stage. In fact, the bamboo flute improvisations by Akihito Obama and Nobuko Miyazaki, on shakuhachi and shinobue, respectively, were most enjoyable!

To calm the scene down before we all had to go home, Emme and Obama performed one more tune. This once again brought the solo human and bamboo voices together, the couple singing  and playing with and without each other, both showing more artistry and skill than reasonable for an average musician. The beauty and peace of the Japanese music lingered with me as I stepped out to fight the crowds in the neon lit hell of Times Square.

Just a few days later, on August 30, Yoko and I went to listen to Obama once again, yet in a different setting. This time he performed in Ran Tea House, just blocks away from where we live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Obama’s performance tonight was part of a series of cultural talks with Asian related artists from different fields, called uNtitleDdialogue initiated by Echo He and Jessie Yang from New York University. This was the shakuhachi player’s last engagement in New York as part of his six-month Asian Cultural Council fellowship that had brought him here to research the intersection between traditional Japanese shakuhachi music and the American improvisational jazz-inspired music.

This concert consisted entirely of traditional solo shakuhachi music, with six numbers of mostly classic honkyoku style. Most of the tunes, such as Honshirabe and Shika-no-Tone, are meditational, the shakuhachi not only playing a tune in flute style; an important part of the music consists of the sounds and atmosphere created by a variety of blowing techniques.  Obama also played Kumoi-jishi, a traditional but not meditational piece in koten style, which the Buddhist monks had made just for fun, and Ko-Myo, a goeika Buddhist hymn.

The performance was followed by a brief lecture by Obama of the history of the shakuhachi, with demonstrations of the various techniques and different types of flutes that he had brought with him. This was clearly interesting to the crowd of more than fifty people, mostly of Chinese origin (my Swedish buddy Björn and I were amongst the handful of Westerners present). Shakuhachi, as so much of Japanese culture was introduced to the islands from China as early as the 6^th century. Since then, the music developed in a uniquely Japanese style, while it slowly disappeared from the mainland.

Yoko, Emme and me

Obama, Yoko and me

The evening ended in an informal manner celebrating Akihito Obama’s completion of the stay in the US and his forthcoming 2^nd of September birthday. While Emme brought out the cake, Obama jammed with a ukulele and guitar player demonstrating in practice the fertile middle ground between traditional shakuhachi music and contemporary jazz.

Lotus Position @ Somethin’ Jazz, 11 August 2012

Obama is a crowd magnet, for sure, but I was surprised to see a line on the sidewalk as Yoko and I arrived in front of Somethin’ Jazz on 52^nd Street on this late Saturday afternoon. After all, this was Akihito Obama, a Japanese shakuhachi player. Almost everyone in the queue was Japanese and I saw Satoru Steve Kobayashi, the owner of the club, checking names in a list in his hand. Luckily, I had made a reservation online earlier in the day. Clearly, this was going to be a cultural event. When we entered the pleasant club space it was crowded and we could see familiar faces belonging to well-known musicologists, academics and people into Japanese culture as well as some from the Japanese consulate in New York.

The musicians entered the stage and Obama, a thin unassuming young man, explained how this was a very important event for him: his first concert in New York! He further explained how in Japan he usually talks a lot during concerts, but he has seen that musicians in New York don’t do so, so he will follow their example.

He started the concert with an atmospheric shakuhachi improvisation which the drummer, Akira Horikoshi, soon joined. The sound of the bamboo flute was thick and breathy setting the stage for an almost mystical atmosphere. Switching to a shorter version of the flute, Obama played a minyo (Japanese folk tune) –like piece that led to an imaginative improvisation backed by Horikoshi’s drumming. Obama bent the tones of the flute so that the impression was almost like of a rubber band stretching, still playing perfectly in tune. The shakuhachi has only five finger holes forcing the player to find the right pitch by a variety of techniques that include covering the holes partly and in different combinations and changing the way you blow. Unlike with the Western flute, playing the shakuhachi involves changing your embouchure, changing the position of the flute, and even twisting your neck in a specific way called kubifuri. All these techniques contribute to the almost magical sound of the ancient instrument.

Akihito Obama started like virtually all shakuhachi players have, studying the traditional shakuhachi music created in the Buddhist temples and by the mendicant Zen Buddhist monks, komuso, hundreds of years ago and reaching its current shape during the Edo period (1600-1868). Obama is, however, more known for his own style of music that incorporates influences from jazz and electronic music. This was the first time we heard his music.

The Japanese masters were joined by a local addition, Brooklynite Joe Harrison on guitar. The next piece was a slow and beautiful tune, which Horikoshi accompanied on brushes. Harrison played a crisp solo, which Yoko classified as fusion-like, somewhat disapprovingly. This was followed by a very thoughtful piece in which Obama’s thick shakuhachi intertwined with a countermelody played by the guitar, leading to an effect-filled guitar solo that intensifying with Horikoshi beating his drums with mallets. After a mallet solo, the music calmed with Obama switching back to his longer flute. The last number of the first set contained an angular, somewhat atonal melody and some nice electronics work by Harrison.

I got the impression that Joe Harrison was a new addition to the group, which would explain that he was at times slightly stiff in his playing. And I could see him reading the music in a concentrated manner during several of the pieces. My impression is backed by the fact that the Somethin’ Jazz website announcing the concert listed Obama and Horikoshi, but continued “Someone – piano or guitar or bass.”

At the beginning of the second set Obama resumed talking. He said that Joe had told him to speak, but that he was nervous because his English teacher was in the audience. Needless to say, this brought out laughter from the crowd. Obviously, an American with similar command of Japanese – or any other foreign language for that matter – would not shy away from showing his proficiency. But the Japanese are modest and decent people and humility is a virtue, unlike in this country of brash and shameless self-promotion.

The second set introduced a special guest, Japanese singer Emme. The first piece Tsuki was about the moon. Obama introduced the sweet melody with the shakuhachi. It was then taken over by a solo voice and finally completed as a lovely shakuhachi-voice duet. Next came a lullaby for adults, Oyasumi, which Emme sang exquisitely accompanied by the guitar and bells. Obama’s playing was wonderful as he produced beautiful bird twitter like effects on the bamboo flute, reminiscent of the shakuhachi classic Tsuru no sugomori or ‘Nesting cranes.’ As the song evolved it developed rhythmic complexity but remained soft and soothing. Continuing on the lullaby theme, Obama pleaded with the audience, “please don’t sleep.” There was no risk of that during the beautiful, rather intense waltz that Horikoshi and Obama, wielding again the smaller flute, introduced and that made Emme dance before her singing part started. Joe Harrison had switched to an acoustic guitar and the song had almost Irish atmosphere, while Emme’s singing was tinted with shimauta-colourings from the southern Japanese islands.

The two final numbers of the concert returned to the trio format and demonstrated some of the most powerful shakuhachi of the evening. Obama masters the difficult instrument in such a way that his playing is never showy. Although he possesses a tremendous technique, he doesn’t draw attention to it: the focus is always on the music and the musicality (this is a sign of mature artistry, as was the case with Miles Davis or John Coltrane, post-Giant Steps). Harrison had also settled in and played a very good and inventive slide solo. The last piece was the most commanding of the evening, and the only one on which Horikoshi resorted to more conventional jazz drumming with sticks on cymbals. It involved some strong shakuhachi and electric guitar as the tempo was ramped up before the ending.

As the applause died, Obama highlighted another difference between Tokyo and New York. Here, there would be two other acts following tonight and so there was no time for playing any further. Indeed, the next band and some of its most eager followers were already waiting in the back of the room as we streamed out. It would be a challenge for them to create equally original and inspiring music and to fill the house with an equally dedicated audience.