Nao Takeuchi and Tamaya Honda Duo
Thelonious January 25, 2015
Nao Takeuchi: Tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, percussion. Tamaya Honda: Drums, bells, gong, cymbals.
Make no mistake, you have no chance. If you are paying attention to what they are doing, they will catch you. They will make you amazed, excited, happy, and at certain times make you laugh, that kind of laugh used for “how is that possible?”
Nao and Tamaya have a perfect bond, a perfect “antenna,” for each other and the music. They know what each other will do. It is easy to notice the profound respect they have for each other as a musician. During the performance they propose different possibilities to each other, and cover each other’s back while they follow those possibilities. It is a solid and confident approach to making music, and the result very beautiful, strong and energetic.
They display what only great and experimental musicians have: patience. There was no hurry to the get to the climax. They want you feel the journey step by step, and want you to come together with them the entire way.
Both know their instruments so well that they can explore sounds far outside the instrument “manual.” Nao created sounds that the saxophone was simply not made for and incorporated it in a very natural way into the music. His use of the circular breathing technique was just perfect. Tamaya explored his drums from “foot to head” and back again.
Despite there being only two musicians, it never felt like other instruments were missing. Everything was there, the piano’s harmony, the drive of the bass, and sometimes it even sounded like there was a second soloist. As Takeuchi varied from saxophone to flute and bass clarinet, Tamaya ranged between cymbals, violin bow, bare hands, Chinese gongs, and Asian bells.
There was no standards or even any song. It was all improvisation. Just amazing solos and rhythms created on stage, patiently sculpted, sometimes using only beautiful sounds, sometimes a little melody, and sometimes just pure rhythm. It was a pack of seven “songs,” three on the first set and four in the second. The rhythms ranged from Asian, African, jazz and at one point even a sprinkle of Brazilian.
It is difficult to say if it was free jazz or just improvisation, maybe both, maybe beyond both. At certain moments, the “melody” felt based in some kind of structure, putting it in the improvisation category in the most common sense. But at other times it was just free, with no structure at all, no usual harmony, and pure spontaneity in a “trance." Their trance was a reminder why some people considered John Coltrane was a saint.
Also pleasing was how they emerged from a chaotic situation to find the perfect time to end the “song." They did not look at each other or make any kind of signal. They just knew when to stop, just like one art critic praised the abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock as just knowing right when to stop. It makes the performance all the more exciting. Energy and beauty on a small stage, up close, is one of the reasons music is pleasingly, happily exhausting and satisfying.