Hideo Oyama Quartet

Live at Ko-Ko, Shibuya
June 7, 2005

Hideo Oyama – alto sax
Yuichi Inoue – piano
Iwao Masuhara – bass
Toru Takahashi – drums

Just starting to write a review of this quartet makes my foot start tapping all over again. Oyama's quartet is the kind of group that permanently inscribes their fast, faultless energetic style right into the musical memory. Although some jazz fans and musicians say that bop has worn itself out as a genre, this quartet wore everyone in the audience out, in the best way, with chorus after chorus of endlessly creative solos on complicated tunes at fantastically quick tempos. The serious dedication of this quartet goes right to the heart of bop improvisation and finds powerful music and rich meaning there still.

Far from being dedicated only to Charlie Parker, the quartet also worked with modern harmonies from McCoy Tyner and Chick Corea just as easily. Speed was not the only element they worked with on these numbers. Masuhara, Inoue and Oyama found complex harmonic patterns and tautly poised melodic directions. They have played together often, and have a knowing sense of interaction. They make the difficult seem easy.

Takahashi on drums fashioned subtle shifts of floating rhythms, breaking up time beneath the other three with a neat sense of the unexpected. He was heavy on the beat at the right times, but kept a nimble percussive feel that seemed to extend to the entire room. No one sat without moving somehow. It was if he played the walls and the customers as well as the drums, drawing everything into the flow. Masuhara's bass helped secure the rhythm solidly and tightly, but still had energy left for lyrical, considered solos.

Oyama's soprano work was especially impressive, bringing in subtle textures to his tone. He is a dry, pointed sax player, but rounds his notes into more than just quickly touched-on spots in the melody. He has a tone all his own, which feels natural and soothing on ballads, and exciting on full-throttle numbers. His clever sense of quoting inside his solos is of course drawn from Parker, but is hilarious and thoughtful and a natural outgrowth of the intricate patterns he creates.

Inoue on piano lit the final fire on "Cherokee," though. His solo seemingly left no key untouched, and packed potent chords under fistfuls of melody. The audience could hardly know when to applaud as it seemed he could just keep going forever. Not to be outdone, Takahashi and Masuhara laid down a wild duo before Oyama came back in to tie it all together into one great, "fully bopped" package. Dizzy Gillespie called his autobiography "To Be or Not To Bop," and Oyama's quartet clearly knows how to be and how to bop both.