Mike Price

Mike Price toured Japan seven times with Toshiko Akiyoshi's big band, and on the eighth he stayed. "I was blown away when I first came to Japan in 1976," Price said over coffee at the Kichijoji jazz kissaten Scratch, "by the newness of course, but also by the stronger taste for jazz here."

That was in 1989 and he's been in Tokyo ever since. Now, he leads his own big band, orchestra and quintet that play regularly in Tokyo clubs. The big band and orchestra draw heavily on Price's experiences with three of the most renowned large American modern jazz groups—Akiyoshi's, Stan Kenton's and Buddy Rich's.

"I had a nice comfy spot rehearsing jazz ensembles at Berklee College of Music, when I was offered the first trumpet chair by Stan Kenton. I couldn't turn it down," he laughed. "Kenton's band was a fascinating place to extend yourself. The compositions of Dee Barton had a rich orchestral palette and an incredible rhythmic energy." Over his 40 year career, Kenton's orchestras incorporated controversial elements into the traditional jazz band format.  With the compositions, especially of  Barton, Kenton's bands innovated with advanced harmonies, Latin rhythms and classical elements.

Price uses many of those same charts with his current big band. "They're hard to get a hold of, those charts, and demand a lot of practice and preparation," he said. "I resorted to practicing the band after midnight, but then it's hard for everyone to get home. Then, I had the band practice in modular units, saxes together, the rhythm section, but it's not quite the same."

After Kenton, Price joined the Buddy Rich Band for two years. Rich was billed as "the world's greatest drummer" and by  most  accounts,  he truly was. "Buddy Rich was the whole continuum of experience. You never knew what was coming, you just had to be ready. We'd be in 4/4 time and in the middle of the song he'd just switch to 3/4. He'd go through bass players, they just couldn't keep up, and one night, he fired two! There was such fire on the bandstand, though. He gave 120 percent and demanded everyone else to as well," he said shaking his head. "This was 68-69, before marketing categories. We played opposite the Who at Fillmore West, and at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1970 with Led Zeppelin. I can't remember who opened for who. After that, I needed to get off the road for a while."

After settling in Los Angeles, he formed his own jazz rock group, but in 1973, he went back on the road with the famed Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band, one of the most important post-bop ensembles, noted for the maintaining the intensity of its swing under fresh musical experiments. "It was always interesting to work with Akiyoshi's textures and concepts, including many Japanese aesthetic ideas. She really had what I'd call a mature approach to the music," he said.

These influences have obviously helped shape his current projects. His big band performs modern jazz in the style of Kenton and Rich's big bands while his orchestra focuses on Duke Ellington's works. In particular, two of Ellington's extended concept works, "Such Sweet Thunder" based on characters and stories of William Shakespeare, and "The Far East Suite" based on his and co-composer Billy Strayhorn's observations during a tour of the Middle and Far East in the 1960s. These two works stand as the pinnacle of Ellington and Strayhorn's compositional genius. Price explained his interest, "I listened to ‘Such Sweet Thunder' in high school and have just lived with it ever since. Many listeners only know Ellington's older pieces, but in these two works the harmonic concepts, the turns and changes are always surprising, always interesting."

Price has performed the entire works as complete, but for most shows tends to make a selection from both works, allowing the audience to hear more of a variety of moods and more solos. "Some pieces only have about 12 bars' solo, but I add tenor sax solos and piano solos as well. Some of Clark Terry's solos are genius, though, so I'm just trying to re-create what he played. The mood is set, so I try to stay within that," he noted.

Price's big band, however, uses the modern jazz conceptions from Stan Kenton and Buddy Rich's bands that allow for wide-open soloing. "Conceptually, the two groups totally contrast. Barton's writing for Kenton emphasizes the brass very differently," explained Price. "The Rich and Kenton sound of the 60s very much comes out of the zeitgeist of the times. We were affected by listening to Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane, not to mention all the political and social changes going on," he said. As a result, soloing gets a much more prominent place than with the Ellington works.

Price's quintet, though, is where soloing really takes center stage. Formed in 1993, the quintet has gone through several personnel changes. Selections of tunes range from the recently deceased saxophonist Joe Henderson to works by the great trumpeters, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard. "With the quintet, I choose stuff I've been listening to, plus things I've been writing."

(Originally published in The Japan Times August 2001)