Yuki Arimasa Interview 2023
Yuki Arimasa is a pianist, professor at Senzoku College of Music, and the founder of Artist Green, a platform for international musicians from all over the world. He has made excellent piano duo recordings with trumpeter Tomonao Hara and guitarist Ryo Ogihara, as well as recording with his own trio, which is active in Tokyo’s jazz clubs. He took time to talk about his work, jazz, and the larger issues of a life in jazz with Michael Pronko.
Pronko: Tell me about all the different groups you're working with.
Arimasa: Right now I'm working with my piano trio, and also I have a trio with no bass, just sax and piano and drum. I'm mainly working with my piano trio and another trio called Samadhi Trio. And there are singers that I have been working with for a long, long time, like Charito. For my piano trio, I mainly concentrate on my original stuff, and I think it's the base of my work in music.
Pronko: Tell more about your piano trio.
Arimasa: Dairiki Hara, the drummer, and I started playing jam sessions with in the 80s. So, we've been trying a lot of different things for a long, long time. That’s a very strong platform where I can work on a lot of different things.
Pronko: You really think of that as a place to bring new compositions? It must give you that sense of double creativity: creativity to write and creativity to play.
Arimasa: Often the drummer understands the music completely differently than we do as a pianist. But that's good. The bass, for the pianist, is often great to be there, but sometimes it's good without a bass. Musically, when I play the chord, the bass is below me to give great support. But when the bass is not there, I can go anywhere in terms of harmony and in terms of accompaniment. More like a Harlem pianist.
Pronko: Harlem in the 1930s, you mean?
Arimasa: That period is the time when they developed the harmonic stance in jazz the most. I can understand it, and I can sort of feel a glimpse of it without bass. The bass player that I'm working with these days is Shunya Wakai, like on my CD, “No ID.” I try to get him to play not just a regular bass line but to create something else. Sometimes I ask him not to play.
Pronko: To change it around?
Arimasa: Yeah. Maybe do a solo instead of just accompanying. What's nice about the piano trio is that the three of us are sort of in an equal position compared to a quartet. In a quartet, the trumpet or sax players are out there, and the piano trio’s backing him or her.
Pronko: So that sense of equality between the three gives you a different set of possibilities to work with?
Arimasa: On piano you can do a lot of things. It has 88 keys and a wide musical range, but actually, a single note doesn't really give you too much push compared to a trumpet or a saxophone. So, I think the trio is a perfect combination to be creative on the piano, because I feel like I'm always being supported by those two rather than them pulling me in a certain direction.
Pronko: So when you play with a trio with sax, drums, and you, how is that different with the sax? You lay back a little bit, or how does that shift around?
Arimasa: I think when I play with the sax without the bass, it's more like I need more imagination, as if I'm substituting for some other instrument. I don't play the bass line, and I don't play the harmony exactly. Actually, I'm playing less because I want to leave a space for imagination.
Pronko: I would think it would be just the opposite. If you don’t have a sax, you've got to cover the bass line and harmony both. But you feel more open?
Arimasa: If I have to cover everything, I should hire a bassist. Or another pianist.
Pronko: When you play with singers, it must be very different. You've got to be a little less free, a little more supportive with a singer.
Arimasa: Yes, of course. The singers are restricted by the words. They can't sing a very syncopated line, for example. So, I have to be considerate to this instrument the vocal.
Pronko: Do you think about the lyrics of the song or how the singer is interpreting that song?
Arimasa: Actually, I think of the lyrics even when I'm playing in a trio. I try to learn all the lyrics of the tune that I play. So very often, I'm singing in the car to try to learn the lyrics. Memorizing the lyrics lets me understand what the melody is all about.
Pronko: Did you sing ever or study vocals?
Arimasa: I can't sing. But I learned a lot from listening to Shirley Horn. I think she sang in such a way that the lyrics come first and the lyrics groove. But I don't really think of playing with vocalists and playing in a trio separately. I think it's almost the same thing. It's just the point you pay attention to is different. You have to worry about the solo, you have to worry about the singers, you have to worry about the groove and the rhythm section. But if I'm accompanying alone, I don't have to worry about all that and I can concentrate mainly on the communication with the vocalists.
Pronko: And I guess playing your own compositions with a trio and then playing standards with a vocalist is a different satisfaction altogether. I mean, you feel satisfied in different ways.
Arimasa: In terms of the satisfaction, they actually are not too far from each other. It's just that the source of the imagination comes from a different place. And actually, I do play standards a lot with my trio too. Either way, I try to play in the moment. So, in that sense, with an original tune, I kind of feel the same way except that an original tune is a lot harder for me.
Pronko: It's harder just because of the complexity of your own writing?
Arimasa: Yeah, the complexity is one thing. And also, the more you play the tune, the more you know it. Some standards I have played my whole life. My original tunes, I haven’t played as much. And I tend to write difficult tunes too.
Pronko: You mentioned teaching, and that was one of the questions I wanted to ask you about, so tell me, you've been teaching for how long now?
Arimasa: Well, I started in 1987. I started teaching at Berklee. So too long, I think.
Pronko: You must see teaching a lot different now than you did before?
Arimasa: Yes. I grew as a musician, of course. So, the teaching grows in the same way, right? Now I'm less methodical. With basic things, if somebody needs to do a crescendo, for example, they have to feel it first rather than just doing a crescendo. They can play this voicing, play that voice, but they have to feel it first. Then even if you have a physical problem on the keyboard, the feeling can resolve how you move your fingers, because if you feel it, your brain will control the fingers. I'm leaning more toward that direction these days.
Pronko: Well, that's interesting you say that because for me, teaching literature, I have the students chart out a novel or film in terms of emotion. So they're not looking at any particular details so much as the emotional shifts in the story. Did you find it helps students to be focused on feeling, or do you find they still get stuck?
Arimasa: The music students tend to stick with methods and structure too much. I'm constantly pushing them to go away from that structure but it takes time because they've been, well, I often say to my students, "You guys are brainwashed. You still believe that so-and-so is a God." You have to get out of that. Especially for piano, a lot of piano teachers teach students to play 1,000 times or 10,000 times until you get it. I was taught in that way too. It's so hard to get rid of that misconception, I think.
Pronko: So do your students listen to all kinds of different music, or are they jazz heads and nothing else?
Arimasa: Actually, our department changed its name a few years ago from the Jazz Department to Jazz and American Music. That's because we want people who are interested in music other than jazz to come into the department and study jazz, because jazz is the foundation of American music. I just started the graduate program here with the same concept, but in that program, we have more students who are interested in different music, hip hop and all those different styles.
Pronko: Tell me how you see the effect of Covid on jazz. It didn't destroy the jazz scene, but did it make any other changes that you see?
Arimasa: It didn't change anything in terms of the jazz scene in Japan. But I think people tend to go more now, and musicians have broader thinking in terms of how they deliver the music to the listeners. Not only just live performance, but they do a lot of different kinds of things. I did Kawasaki Jazz online and created the online video for that. And I run the organization called Artist Green. Before, we had a small festival here in Tokyo and we were planning to do something in Jakarta, but during Covid, we did an online version. I get music from different people in different countries and put everything together. I'm kind of reevaluating to see what we should do to support jazz.
Pronko: Looking ahead, what do you have in mind?
Arimasa: I'm thinking about doing a project of music in the '70s. Because that's what I grew up with. It means a lot to me. So, I want to incorporate the music that I used to listen to during the '70s into the trio’s music. But not just simple jazz arrangement or '70s pops. The '70s to me is very special in terms of music. The structure of the melody is so different from the time before and the time after, actually.
Pronko: So, the feeling and the music together?
Arimasa: Yeah, that’s it.
More about Yuki Arimasa can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDaogpDqv54Wk8UCDy4T7GQ
@yukiarimasa
@kyasamira
December 27, 2023