Tetsuro Kawashima "SUNA an edge of the standards" (ewe) 2002

Tetsuro Kawashima—tenor sax
    

This is a gutsy CD. To strip away all support and let your single voice flow out unadorned is a brave undertaking. But perhaps that’s part of the point—creating a challenge, one that Tetsuro Kawashima meets it on this CD without hesitation, and with a strong voice.

The solo tenor all alone lets his ideas come through in unadorned fashion. He plays pure, simple and direct. It’s not that with his regular quartets he plays differently, but solo, you can really overhear the interior beauty of his playing. The result is a sharp, unmediated presence. It feels as if he’s right there in the room, working out ideas, and thinking out loud. The result is almost like a writer’s journal—but one that’s been edited, constructed and considered, without any loss of the energetic flow of ideas Kawashima is famous for in his live quartets. It’s spontaneous and personal.

The songs should probably be listed as personnel, Kawashima is so intimate and connected to every melody. They play through him in the best sense of the phrase. He confronts the composers, the melodies, the rhythms and enters into them fully. Several, though, stand out. “Cherokee” starts at half time, like old friends who haven’t met in a long time, but gradually warms up to the familiar high speed of interaction and lively exchange. On, “All the Things You Are” he shoots through brilliant lines, half-hitting notes and pushing for the next as fast and furiously as possible, then sinking back into slow, considered delicacy.

“Rhythmaning” forces a rhythmic attention that would appear to make melody, especially at faster tempos, difficult without a drummer. Kawashima solos with  fearlessness, balancing on a highwire without the net of a rhythm section below. He stops at the end of phrases, then pauses, and gets right back into it. Most interesting is his delight in the pauses. It’s almost as if the silences between lines, phrases and notes are as important as the notes themselves. This use of silence is especially brilliant.

The songs often feel unfinished, but in a good way.  Each of the tunes is a little bit like those sketches by famous artists that are exhibited beside the final, full-color painting in a museum. The sketch reveals the process, the shapes, the composition and interior structure that is easy to overlook when all the colors are filled in completely. At times, the mind starts to unconsciously add a rhythm section behind the melody lines, as if piano, bass and drums are hiding in there somewhere, just waiting to spring out at any moment and join the fun.