So I went to Kyoto University yesterday to see Otomo Yoshihide's "New
Jazz Big Band", occasionally (but pretty much forgettably) augmented by
Kahimi Karie on vocals. I managed to miss the first half of their set,
but what I heard was pretty great: the expanded line-up (up to eleven
people on stage for the stuff that I saw) really rounded out the sound,
especially on "Orange Was the Colour of Her Dress..." (Mingus tunes
just don't sound right performed by small ensembles), and I liked the
extra nuggets that were dropped into the mix when Otomo would muck with
his turntables for a minute or two between songs. Having vibes, a
melodica, a French horn, a trombone, a couple of saxes, and Yoshigaki's
trumpet in the works made the group sound HUGE. Sachiko M even sounded
funky at one point, tapping out a rhythm of sine hits to accompany the
band instead of piercing the mix with longer shards.
Yesterday was also the first time that I had seen or heard anything
about this Alfred Harth guy. He lightened the mood considerably,
clowning around with rubber tubes and mouthpiece birdcall noises, and
hopping up and down while he played; I can imagine some of the
too-serious fans in the audience being a bit put off by his antics. As
a replacement for the perpetually schmaltzy Kikuchi, though, I was more
than happy to see him bring a tenor sax and a bass clarinet into the
fray: too many alto players bring cheesy "Night Moves" licks to the
table, and there was definitely none of that going on. He tried the
Roland Kirk thing, playing the two simultaneously, but there was so
much else going on at the time that it was impossible to hear how it
sounded.
So... yeah, neat. I'd kill to see a similar line-up with Phew on
vocals, which will apparently be doing a few shows in Europe later in
the month.
Unfortunately, the night was closed out by Naruyoshi Kikuchi's current
endeavour, a bland piano-bass-drums-alto quartet with a "live dub"
component (minimal reverb and filters, applied sparingly) and J-pop
singer UA on the mic. Kikuchi's playing has always dripped with just a
bit too much '80s cheese for my tastes, and the heat made UA's
dragged-out attempts at sounding sultry impossible to take for more
than about twenty minutes. (HINT TO PERFORMERS: When your audience is
already sweating to death, don't take five minutes to run through the
first eight lines of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" syllable by
syllable.) They briefly sounded neat when UA and Kikuchi matched one
another note for note in a slow, harmonized duet, but the vanilla
summertime jazz was back a few minutes later, and Ego-Wrappin' has been
doing that stuff better for years.
-me
