Kei Akagi Trio

Pit Inn,

October 7, 2009

Kei Akagi -- piano

Tomokazu Sugimoto – bass

Tamaya Honda – drums

The Kei Akagi trio is an ongoing phenomenon that gets better with every hearing. The trio has played, toured and recorded together for several years now. And yet, they are so together in all ways that you can’t tell if a song is one they’ve played for years or one they just wrote the night before. The group might better be called a musical mind in three parts. The last night of their 2009 tour showed the workings of that mind.

Starting out with a fast-tempo number called “Activities for which your visa does not entitle you…,” a phrase no doubt picked up from the endless forms filled in on each annual tour since Akagi, born in Japan, now resides in the United States. He meets up with Sugimoto and Honda a couple times every year. The trio started the set with this nifty, high-energy, call-and-response tune. They are so in sync they do not really wait for the response after the call, though, but just jump in and mess around like close friends in conversation. They interrupt each other, add the end of a line or just ignore the last musical comment and take off in a new direction.

“Maybe With You” slowed the pace down during the first set. The melody followed an angular, lyrical shape with room for Sugimoto to deliver a thoughtful bass solo. The last song on the first set worked a nimble Caribbean-ish cross-hatching rhythm that was a delight. Spinning the song around the rhythm gave the song a distinction from most free jazz. It was more fun, for one, but more complex as well. The return to rhythm at the center pushed them to diverse directions as much as bringing them to any one singular point.

The first song of the second set, “Tagger’s Delight,” did not bother to warm up them or the crowd but immediately dug into a fluid-fast tempo that kept the throttle out all the way. Rather than leaving the big solos for the end, Akagi puts them up front, pushing Sugimoto on an extended and muscular bass solo and maneuvering Honda into a thumping, throbbing drum solo. If they were tired, they didn’t show it, but used it. The speed that all three play is startling considering how much they play with their entire bodies, leaning fully into their instruments, barely able to sit still. As a result, even at wildly fast tempos, the music erupts naturally from their inner core.

On slower numbers, though, like the lovely Hermeto Pascoal tune, the trio eased into a luxuriously slow shower of sound. They did not force any of their songs, but let  the ebb and flow of their inner tidal motion take its own course. That happened on the fast tunes, but much more clearly on the slower ones. That also happened as a group. The musical center of energy shifted easily from one to another. Their solos never quite sounded like solos, but simply a different source of energy, and different textures. The instrument was less the issue than pushing the limits of the instrument. The trio never lost its sense of adventure, though, which made the evening feel like musical experimentation with a very warm and human face.