On Jazz
Jazz in Japan would like to say farewell to Kiyoshi Koyama 児山紀芳, a noted jazz lover who spent his life, his energy and his being to jazz in Japan. He will be missed. Writer David Gregory attended his funeral and tells us what it means to have lost such a jazz figure.
I confess I’ve been streaming music for the past year. I’ve bought fewer CDs, but I’m perhaps listening more than ever. As an avid music consumer for 45 years, moving from 45s (one dollar at the local “Tune Shop”) to vinyl LPs, CDs, and mp3s, I know streaming should feel like progress, but mostly I feel guilty. And in need of taking stock of what it means to connect my computer to my stereo and have the largest amount of music in my life.
With all the personal, portable, computerized listening devices available these days, music people are turning into recluses. It’s easy to stay at home with YouTube, iTunes, Amazon or a streaming service, not to mention CDs and stereo equipment, and feel your musical experience is complete.
Masabumi Kikuchi’s piano playing was unique, intense and spectacularly fun. Sadly, he has died at the age of 75, in New York. Playing in both Japan and the United States for decades, he recorded his own work with many of the top names in jazz, including Elvin Jones, Gil Evans, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, and long-term collaborator, Paul Motian, as well as many of the younger generation of New York based jazz musicians.
Of course, there are documentaries, biopics, teaching videos, jazz as background music, but almost no films that get into the inner, demanding dynamics of jazz. Unlike most jazz films, which often end up records of performances or historical fact-listing, “Whiplash” goes right into the pain of jazz.
Mindfulness has in many ways always been at the core of jazz. It is possible to listen to jazz as background music or as accompaniment to the activities of life, but jazz, when listened to with even a smidgen of care, creates
I find jazz to be a metaphor that encompasses a broad section of life's best experiences. Immanuel Kant said that ethics begins in aesthetics. I could not agree more. It is not that you can judge someone's character by the type of music they like, but that beauty and character
The overlapping concepts and practices of jazz and Zen have a common starting point. To put it simply, or reduce it to an initiating idea: All action springs from inaction and all sound springs from silence.
Listening to jazz at one of my nearby, favorite haunts, Sometime, in Kichijoji, after a particularly long and satisfying solo, I started to wonder why jazz has so many long solos, and why those solos appeal so strongly to Japanese jazz listeners, who seem to be picked up and carried along on the jam
Want the complete Lester Young Early Recordings? Need a DVD of early Louis Armstrong vocals? What about a vinyl record of Sonny Clark live in Paris? Looking for a re-mastered collection of mid-career Stan Getz? What about a reissue of, well, pretty much the entire Blue Note catalogue?
After the earthquake and tsunami on Friday, March 11, from the middle to the north of the main island, Honshu, life in Japan has changed for everyone. Nearly 500,000 people are living in evacuation facilities and the count of the dead and missing has just gone over 20,000.
Japan’s love for jazz has no stronger evidence than the constant sound of jazz being played all over the country. In elevators, convenience stores, restaurants, lobbies and public spaces of all kinds, jazz is the soundtrack for Japan’s daily life.
Spontaneity is at the core of both jazz and Zen. The overlaps and parallels are hard to ignore when listening to really great jazz improvisers, and easier perhaps, when listening in a country with a long Zen tradition.
When I first came to Tokyo, I was overwhelmed by the one-two punch of culture shock and "megalopolis shock." To me, Tokyo was a blur of fast-walking people, confusing spaces and unfamiliar customs. Though I had traveled a lot and lived in other cities
Listening to jazz at one of my nearby, favorite haunts, Sometime, in Kichijoji, after a particularly long and satisfying solo, I started to wonder why jazz has so many long solos, and why those solos appeal so strongly to Japanese jazz listeners, who seem to be picked up and carried along on the jam, responding to each and every turn of phrase. Are jazz solos gift or commodity? I wondered.