The Zek Trio
Strings, Kichijoji
June 30, 2009
Kurumi Shimizu - piano
Yasushi Yoneki – bass
Tamaya Honda – drums
The Zek Trio is an unusual one. They play the music of Led Zeppelin, but as jazz, and a very unique, personal kind of jazz. Many groups have worked through the music of one particular pop composer or rock group before, and others, like Happy Apple or The Bad Plus, have thrown in songs from bands like Nirvana or Black Sabbath, but the Zek Trio goes into Led Zeppelin in tremendous depth. Their intriguing blend of rock music and jazz style was innovative, thought provoking and a whole lotta fun.
Surprisingly perhaps, jazz has a lot to say about the depth of Led Zeppelin. The first song, “Kashmir” showed where Zek was headed. The trio jumped right into high energy mode, even while they uncovered the Middle Eastern modes and deep blues packed into Led Zep’s huge-scale anthem. Songs that were meant to fill large coliseums worked just as well in a small jazz club. The catchy hooks bursting out of massive amplifiers adapted well the subtle dynamics and complex techniques of a jazz trio. It is startling to hear songs that one knows so well played with such intensity and an entirely different vocabulary, but Led Zeppelin’s pan-musical approach was always waiting for just this kind of re-conception.
The character of each song never drew a lot from the hard rock that Led Zeppelin chiseled out. As with the jazz-rock fusion movement in the late 60s and early 70s, the inclusion of ‘loudness’ does a lot to energize jazz. However, this borrowing by the trio was no reduction to head-banging simplicity. Instead, each song also brought out the introspective side of Led Zeppelin, the unpredictable moments of genuine melodic beauty, less dazed and confused than calmly, deeply pensive.
Zek kept the intensity but infused it with jazz feeling and the musicality of extended, innovative improvisation. “Hey, Hey What Can I Do?” opened up into a towering drum solo from Honda, while the revved-up blues of “Heartbreaker” gave bassist Yoneki a chance to really thumb the strings. “Whole Lotta Love” transformed the basic rock riff into a range of textures, moods and music. Packed in to that one tune is rock, funk, blues, minimalism and of course, jazz. The brilliance of the trio is that they unfold all of those elements, softening some, cranking up others, reframing and reinvigorating all of it again.
Shimizu’s delicately controlled piano would seem a world away from a giant mid-70s rock concert, but she gets surprising intensity out of the keyboard, with an acoustic sound that is just as thunderous as electric guitar and with a reverb that comes from the natural acoustics of the entire club. She has a deep feeling for their music and makes it her own. There’s no gimmick here, only passion.
Towards the end of the set, Roberto, a singer with a Led Zeppelin copy band, hopped up to add vocals on several songs. Though unplanned, his singing on “Heartbreaker” and “The Ocean” re-inserted the lyrics, so much an important part of Led Zeppelin. With slightly more steady rhythm and supportive chording, the four gave a very jazzy vocal take on the songs, which was an entirely fresh direction to take the songs. Roberto certainly knows how to blast out the vocals like Robert Plant! The step towards rock for these songs continued the fascinating musical interplay of the evening.
Zek set up a dynamic conversation, one that probably is always already going on in the heads of most listeners. In this age of hyper-specialization and marketing categories, a lot of people still really love both jazz and rock. But what is really amazing is how Zek keeps the conversation between jazz and rock so fascinating for two full sets, stopping not because they ran out of material, but just because playing all night would be the only way to get it all in. This is a great band unlike any other, one that seriously approaches jazz and rock in fascinating new ways.
