Yoko Kobayashi "Beyond the Forest"

Yoko Kobayashi "Beyond the Forest"(October 2020)

小林洋子 Yoko Kobayashi – piano

Kobayashi has long been one of my favorite pianists in Tokyo. Her live shows let her deep love of jazz shine through, but also but she also goes her own way and never lets the genre define her art. In whatever direction she goes, she has a deep sense of how the keyboard delivers beauty, and nowhere is that shown better than on “Beyond the Forest.”On this solo recording, the title and cover art capture the feeling of her original compositions neatly. The music springs from some rich organic source where you can smell the oxygen. Like a walk in a deep forest, the music takes its time, looking from one spot more than racing around, slowing to reflect more than rushing to articulate.

The opening song「月時雨(石庭の雨より)」 encompasses the calm reflection of watching a rock garden in the rain under the moon. Kobayashi makes the sense of time shift, and the song, though only sound, seems to sink deeply into all your senses. Her piano works with shapes and forms, feelings and nuances, as much as with melodies and rhythms.

The title track is a pleasant delight. It’s hard to imagine what would be beyond a forest, for the forest is the metaphor for so many stories, situations, and experiences. The song moves in dancing circles of sound, all of them pleasing and as complex as a forest view.

On the third tune, “Turn Circle,” Kobayashi pulls out more of a regular sense of chords, adding a repeated measure that drives the reflective explorations of melody and tonal direction. “Improvisation: Greetings with birds,” sounds less like the whimsy of improvisation than a full expression of her years of experience, bringing up lush chords and delicate swirls of keyboard.

Perhaps the most intriguing tune on the CD is the centerpiece, “A・U・N.” Recalling the rock garden of the first track, Buddhist ideas of beginning and ending, the intense tune feels like a piano expression of all the ideas and patterns found in temple gate guardians, meditative breathing, and Buddhist metaphysics. That is to say, it’s not trying to import western jazz, it’s creating music from local sources.

The calm reflective feeling of the music doesn’t detract from the surprises. Kobayashi moves the musical flow in various directions, turning a line unexpectedly, bringing it back to the center, or spinning it around. And that playfulness and excitement increase over the course of the album, the other tunes also reveal an openness to exploring and creating musical art.

https://en.piano-yokokobayashi-jazz.com/
Past reviews: https://www.jazzinjapan.com/homepage/2008/11/18/yoko-kobayashi-trio-plus-one/