Jazz in Japan would like to say farewell to Kiyoshi Koyama 児山紀芳, a noted jazz lover who spent his life, his energy and his being to jazz in Japan. He will be missed. Writer David Gregory attended his funeral and tells us what it means to have lost such a jazz figure.
Read MoreI confess I’ve been streaming music for the past year. I’ve bought fewer CDs, but I’m perhaps listening more than ever. As an avid music consumer for 45 years, moving from 45s (one dollar at the local “Tune Shop”) to vinyl LPs, CDs, and mp3s, I know streaming should feel like progress, but mostly I feel guilty. And in need of taking stock of what it means to connect my computer to my stereo and have the largest amount of music in my life.
Read MoreWith all the personal, portable, computerized listening devices available these days, music people are turning into recluses. It’s easy to stay at home with YouTube, iTunes, Amazon or a streaming service, not to mention CDs and stereo equipment, and feel your musical experience is complete.
Read MoreMasabumi Kikuchi’s piano playing was unique, intense and spectacularly fun. Sadly, he has died at the age of 75, in New York. Playing in both Japan and the United States for decades, he recorded his own work with many of the top names in jazz, including Elvin Jones, Gil Evans, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, and long-term collaborator, Paul Motian, as well as many of the younger generation of New York based jazz musicians.
Read MoreOf course, there are documentaries, biopics, teaching videos, jazz as background music, but almost no films that get into the inner, demanding dynamics of jazz. Unlike most jazz films, which often end up records of performances or historical fact-listing, “Whiplash” goes right into the pain of jazz.
Read MoreMindfulness has in many ways always been at the core of jazz. It is possible to listen to jazz as background music or as accompaniment to the activities of life, but jazz, when listened to with even a smidgen of care, creates
Read MoreI find jazz to be a metaphor that encompasses a broad section of life's best experiences. Immanuel Kant said that ethics begins in aesthetics. I could not agree more. It is not that you can judge someone's character by the type of music they like, but that beauty and character
Read MoreThe overlapping concepts and practices of jazz and Zen have a common starting point. To put it simply, or reduce it to an initiating idea: All action springs from inaction and all sound springs from silence.
Read MoreListening to jazz at one of my nearby, favorite haunts, Sometime, in Kichijoji, after a particularly long and satisfying solo, I started to wonder why jazz has so many long solos, and why those solos appeal so strongly to Japanese jazz listeners, who seem to be picked up and carried along on the jam
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