Mohican Seki Group

Rooster March 5, 2009

Takahito "Mohican" Seki - piano
Shoji Hirakawa - drums
Getao Takahashi - bass
Akio Fujita – alto sax
Eiji Taniguchi – clarinet

The master of Live Cafe Rooster no doubt had to call the piano tuner the day after Mohican Seki. Seki played with key-thrashing energy that made not only the piano but also the entire club and everything in it throb to the intense Latin clave beat. It’s a Latin jazz workout for everyone! But pity the poor piano, turned into percussion instrument for the muscular, passionate music Seki specializes in. Even with only three members from his usual octet along with special guest, clarinetist Eiji Taniguchi, their full Latin sound was as intense and exuberant as always.

Playing a mix of Seki’s originals together with Latin-arranged standards, the music’s basic beat was easy to move to, in fact, you can’t help but move. The music though was more than dance music, with lightning quick chord changes, finger-breaking harmonies, and muscle-burning rhythms. Rocketing through rollercoaster songs like these ones fast and accurately, made the musicians frown in concentration. At the end of the night, you could tell that the music was demanding; they were drenched in sweat.

Seki, though, offered different kinds of intensity, not just wild ones. Both sets contained calm, reflective moments as well, where the sophistication of his arrangements could be more easily followed, but where the depth of feeling came to the front. The ballads had everyone in the audience whooping just as much as the fast, tricky numbers. Seki’s shifting between moods and approaches shows the wide range of Latin possibility: slow, fast and in between, always passionate. After the slower songs, though, the audience quickly stood back up to dance and clapping all the while.

The solos by Fujita and Taniguchi kept the front line sounding as big as a much larger band. Fujita’s bouncy high energy contrasted with Taniguchi’s flowing lyricism—two sides of the same musical coin. Takahashi on bass was a marvel: supportive, soloing, commenting and laughing the entire time, totally in the moment on every song. His improvised lyrics about dancing were hilarious, comic and yet still amazingly on the beat. Though two or more percussionists is standard in most Latin bands, Hirakawa needed no help. His drum set seemed capable of conjuring up any Latin rhythm, and still saving energy for jaw-dropping drum solos.

Having just returned from a tour of Taiwan with his bigger eight-person group, Seki was especially fired up. His piano playing is blazing and burly, and yet rather light and graceful at times, too. Starting each song with the Latin piano styles he has mastered, the music was contained within the embrace of his two (perhaps bionically attached in Cuba?) arms. Once each song’s tempo kicked in, he added sizzling fills, hard-hitting chords and fervent Latin piano. If the piano needed a little re-tuning after, well, that’s just how it is. That’s still cheaper than a plane to Havana, after all!