Tokyo Jazz Festival
Tokyo International Forum, Hall A—Tokyo, Japan
September 2-4, 2011
Day 1—Friday, September 2nd
The Next Step
6:30 pm ~ 7:20 pm
Naruyoshi Kikuchi DCPRG
7:35 pm ~ 8:15 pm
Raul Midón
8:30 pm ~ 9:30 pm
JAZZ FOR JAPAN "LIVE" with Special Guest Al Jarreau
featuring Clarence McDonald, David T. Walker, Del Atkins, Hubert Laws, Ndugu Chancler, Tom Scott
It was a great and majestic opening night for the Tokyo Jazz Festival, the three-day event kicked-off on the evening of Friday, September 2nd at Hall A of the Tokyo International Forum in Yurakicho, Central Tokyo. Day one's headline act included a group of A-list jazz musicians from the United States that gathered together to put together a compilation album in which all the proceeds would go to the Japanese Red Cross Society, benefitting those victims of the March 11th earthquake, tsunami, and radiation leak in Japan. That compilation album being none other than the Jazz For Japan album released on June 1st. Calling themselves the Jazz For Japan Band, the members comprised of Clarence McDonald (piano/electric piano), David T. Walker (guitar),Del Atkins (bass), Hubert Laws (flute/saxophone), Ndugu Chancler (drums), Tom Scott(saxophone), and featuring a very special guest who wasn't on the original album's recording, seven time Grammy Award winning singer, Mr. Al Jarreau.
The Jazz For Japan Band's performance really was a precursor and foreshadowing of what could be expected the following two days at the festival. They shined, but who really stole the show that first night was Al Jarreau. Mr. Jarreau was an extremely great addition to the band, and the audience loved him because he was a personality and a half, a very cheerful man indeed. Jarreau helped to fill out and complete the band because he added that "x factor" that was missing along bringing vocals to the mix. Due to his addition, the Jazz For Japan Band could add a new arsenal of tunes to their repertoire.
Some of the tunes from this band included "So What," "Sugar," and "What A Wonderful World." Jarreau added lyrics to the John Coltrane tune "My Favorite Things" and the Chick Corea written tune "Spain" which was unbelievably mind- blowing. It's arguable whether "Spain" here is as good as the Stevie Wonder rendition that can be found on the recent Live At Last Blu-Ray & DVD, but nonetheless it was still a great performance of that particular tune. Yes, Mr. Jarreau was definitely the star of the night.
Day 2—Saturday, September 3rd
Jazz Picture
1:00 pm ~ 1:55 pm
The Count Basie Orchestra
2:05 pm ~ 2:55 pm
Richard Galliano & Naoko Terai "THE PIAZZOLA PROJECT"
with Orchestra Camerata Ducale -from Italy-
3:10 pm ~ 4:00 pm
Michel Legrand Trio
Groove
6:00 pm ~ 6:50 pm
quasimode
7:05 pm ~ 7:55 pm
Incognito
8:10 pm ~ 9:00 pm
Hiromi THE TRIO PROJECT
feat. Anthony Jackson & Simon Phillips
The second day opened up just how the first ended, great! The beginning half of the day from 1 to 4 p.m. was dubbed "Jazz Picture" and showcased three bands, the first of which to play wereThe Count Basie Orchestra, the big band of seventeen members plus a conductor (Dennis Mackrel). They started off the afternoon with a back-to-basics older style of jazz harkened back to big band and swing era days. A couple of tunes heard from The Count Basie Orchestra include "To You," a tune from back in 1961 when Count Basie met Duke Ellington, and "Whirly Bird." Band tenor saxophonist Doug Miller had a great solo going on "Whirly Bird." It was a relaxing and enlightening start to the day being able to listen to the great hour of music they put on.
Unfortunately it was bewildering listening to the next group take stage because they brought classical music to a jazz festival. A bit of blasphemy because the music wasn't appropriate for the show in the least bit, especially going on after The Count Basie Orchestra and before the Michel Legrand Trio.
Richard Galliano & Naoko Terai with Orchestra Camerata Ducale from Italy really took a misstep with the music. It is possible to live with some diversity of genre bending at a jazz festival or concert because jazz has so many sub-genres itself, it can embrace some elements from other genres of music, but this performance included zero percent jazz. Jazz is a product of African-American culture and arguably America's greatest contribution to the arts. Now you don't have to be African-American at all to play it, but the genre should be respected by whoever plays it. The organizers of this festival really brought in some great talent for this year and for a great price for the customer to pay for entry, but this was a bad decision on their behalf.
Imagine if it were a Japanese traditional folk music festival listeners were attending with Japanese enka music, samisen and sanshin instruments, and at some point during the show a performer comes on stage and begins playing a flamenco guitar or Irish bagpipes, now you can comprehend just how irrelevant and absurd this performance was to the whole theme of the event. It was absurd for the organizers to think jazz and classical music are so easily interchangeable like that. It's not like what they were playing was bad music, it's just that people are coming into the auditorium with a mindset on jazz and expecting jazz at a jazz festival and are getting something else they didn't ask for. It felt betraying.
It was totally refreshing to have Michel Legrand and the other two members of his trio take over before the two-hour intermission halfway through the day. Legrand played one beautiful original ballad during his set titled "What Are You Doing The Rest of Your Life." Two more memorable tunes from Legrand's performance were those of Miles Davis. Davis played a very significant part in Legrand's career. Legrand's first album was with Davis and Davis' last album was with Michel, so everything comes full circle with Legrand's two-track tribute to Davis. The first of these tunes to be played was "My Funny Valentine"; Legrand did all of Mile's trumpet blows by the sounds of his voice, which was rather creative. The tune was very sweet, slow, and extremely mellow. It sounded as if Legrand spent a meticulous amount of time in really learning these tunes thoroughly to play them perfectly. On the second tune "The Jam Session" (although if I can recall correctly I think Legrand called it "The Dingo Runs Fast" at this festival), taken from the motion picture soundtrack of the film "Dingo," it was interesting listening to Legrand replace Davis' parts and licks with his piano.
After the Legrand performance, the hall broke for recess from 4 to 6 p.m., and returning from that the night continued until closing with what was dubbed as the "Groove" period of the event. The Groove period brought everyone into a much more upbeat and up- tempo, livelier part of the event. Japanese club jazz & nu-jazz group "quasimode" (spelled with a lowercase q) really showed that the Japanese pros could jam up there with the best of the foreign pack. It was great that many Japanese acts were apart of this jazz festival's showcase because a lot of them are underrated musicians. The sad part is that they will continue to fall on blind eyes and deaf ears to the western world. Tokyo has a large foreign community but one could barely see any foreigners in attendance on day two, out of the hundreds to thousands of people there, the foreign crowd could be counted on one hand.
Continuing the groove was a Japanese favorite Incognito, the UK acid jazz band that began a little over thirty years ago. Led by bandleader Jean-Paul "Bluey" Maunick, Incognito annually performs in Tokyo and all around Japan in venues such as Blue Note Tokyo, Blue Note Osaka, Blue Note Nagoya and at various other jazz festivals. The Japanese people really love and know their music. For a large part of their performance, Incognito had the crowd standing on their feet, dancing, clapping and waving their hands. They earn a lot of points for great showmanship and for bringing a lot of excitement to the show. Performing live they usually play different arrangements of their back music catalogue that can be found on their fourteen albums. Some tunes played by Incognito on this night included "Nights Over Egypt," "Reach Out," "Everyday," and their closing song "Love For Japan." "Love For Japan" is a single written especially for the benefit and victims of the March 11th earthquake. Before they exited the stage, Bluey gave a great message to the audience. Unfortunately I didn't transcribe it as he was saying it, I did try however to jot it down on paper about two or three minutes after he finished making it. Although not a direct word-for-word quote, I will try to retell it like he said it as best as I can.
"For the past few months, when the rest of the world turned on the TV all people saw was Japan. What we saw is that Japan has great dignity in this time of crisis. People elsewhere in the world would be running crazy, stealing things, burning things down, but not Japan. After the earthquake disaster and tsunami and radiation problem which is still ongoing, people found ways of doing things and trying to help anyway they could by saving power and coming together as a nation. Thank you for your courage. I have great respect for your nation. Now we are here joined together at a festival. What is a festival? A festival is a celebration of life, and we are united one nation under a groove."
The eloquence of how he put the words together and delivered it so honestly and from the heart was moving, it was the way the night should have ended, but alas it wasn't over yet, one final act still remained to play.
The final act of day two was pianist Hiromi Uehara of Japan and the other two members of her trio, bassist Anthony Jackson from the USA and drummer Simon Phillips from the UK. Hiromi Uehara herself is one of Japan's most successful and celebrated jazz musicians who had been lucky enough to break into the western music market. Discovered by Chick Corea in Tokyo, she is one of the more widely known and listened to Japanese performers here and abroad. Although she possesses a good technical skill on the piano her music can be a bit hit or miss. She was classically trained first and later introduced to jazz, and that's the way it felt at this festival, like her music at points was lacking a jazz feel to it and had too strong of something else there instead. She is also a bit on the quirky side when she performs, she is a bit too excited all the time and squirmish, oftentimes standing up at the piano, sitting back down, and then doing it again. It's a big distraction trying to concentrate on the music while watching someone do wacky body movements, head twitching, and facial expression changes all the time. This feeling is probably parallel with the way Miles Davis felt about Louis Armstrong and all the grinning he did (but he wasn't doing that while he was playing mind you), even though he thought he was a great trumpet player. The night overall went from super exciting with the audience standing up for both quasimode and Incognito to being toned down for the final act. Whatever happened to finishing on a high note?
Day 3—Sunday, September 4th
Makin' Happy!
1:00 pm ~ 1:55 pm
Kenny Barron Trio featuring Kiyoshi Kitagawa & Johnathan Blake
2:05 pm ~ 2:55 pm
Hiromi Uehara x Kazunori Kumagai
3:10 pm ~ 4:00 pm
Sergio Mendes
The Jazz Special
6:00 pm ~ 6:50 pm
Terumasa Hino SPECIAL PROJECT feat. Masahiko Sato, dj honda
with Akira Ishii, Kenji Jeno Hino, Takashi Sugawa, Noritaka Tanaka, Saori Yano, Ryo Ogihara
7:05 pm ~ 7:55 pm
TOKYO JAZZ SUPER GUITAR SESSION
directed by Lee Ritenour
with special guests: Mike Stern, Tomoyasu Hotei, John Beasley,
Melvin Davis, Jon Weckl
8:10 pm ~ 9:00 pm
DMS—George Duke, Marcus Miller, Davis Sanborn
Going straight into the big names of day three, Sergio Mendes the bossa nova, samba, and jazz pianist (although jamming on this day with only a Yamaha Motif X58 keyboard) from Brazil played some tunes from his Brasil '66 (A&M, 1966) days and from his three most recent albumsTimeless (Concord Records, 2008), Encanto (Concord Records, 2008), and Bom Tempo (Concord Records, 2010). Some of the tunes performed includes "The Waters of March," "Mas que Nada," "Surfboard," "Água de Beber," "Berimbau/Consolacao," and "The Look of Love." On the song "Berimbau," Mendes' percussionist left the drums for a moment's time to come to the front and center of the stage to perform the Afro-Brazilian dance/martial art Capoeira, which for many if it is their first time to see, it is a real spectacle to watch and behold. Although Mendes and his percussionist were great, the rest of the band weren't hitting the marks expected of them. Sergio Mendes set was good, not great, with some of the tunes sounding better on the albums then they do live. Is it too much to ask for a little more?
The big "Special Project" organized by Japanese trumpeter Terumasa Hino and featuring his Japanese fusion crew was great. Hino's stage presence and playing is more than a little Miles Davis inspired, anyone could easily tell this from his stature, the way he dressed, the way he held his trumpet, walked around the stage, usage of timing and space, and the way he brought the trumpet up to his lips. Even though obviously a bit of imitation, it was still good nonetheless, and quite cool too. The music he and his band played was free, dark, and brooding. It was very much Bitches Brew & In A Silent Way-esque.
Lee Ritenour and his "Super Guitar Session" followed up Terumasa Hino well and was a great contrast to the music Hino played. Both sets by both groups were great. While Hino's set was more jazz/hip hop fusion, Ritenour's set was more jazz/rock fusion. Lee Ritenour started off playing alone with a beautiful guitar melody before inviting out his two guests Mike Stern andTomoyasu Hotei. The three together had a great chemistry going. Everything started off smooth and gradually went more rock n' roll. It was a roller coaster of a ride they brought the audience on with a lot of changes in tempo and genres. They rocked the place out in a thunderous way.
Not to be upstaged however, the final act still remained and they planned on moving everyone in an unspeakable way. Their introduction set the scene, Tokyo was in store for something larger than life, and the people could feel it in the air. As the drummer and keyboardist sat there playing out a beat and melody, the main attraction of stars began to take stage one-by-one. FirstMarcus Miller walked on stage, pausing and accepting the applause for his arrival. He continued walking and went over to his bass guitar, throwing the guitar strap over his shoulder and then began playing a bass melody. Just after everything sizzled and began to simmer again, the next guy, David Sanborn comes out. It's perfectly planned and timed arrivals that kept the audiences' adrenaline high and on the verge of breaking down from overjoyment. Then Sanborn began to blow, it was beautiful. It was an opportunity to rest, listen, and enjoy. Before the audience could get too comfortable however, here came George Duke right on cue to pick up his portable keyboard. Throwing the strap around his shoulder and wielding it like a guitar, the audience goes crazy again. DMS had in fact arrived. Playing out their opening tune "Run For Cover" like no one has ever heard it before, it was moving.
The thing DMS had cemented this night with their performance was that they were going to be the MVB (most valuable band) this year at the festival, not to be outdone by anyone. The entire three days of performances were fantastic and just like the third act of a great movie, they made certain when you left, you would never ever forget your experience for the rest of your life after you walked out of the theater. This was the way it's supposed to be. The night really did end the way it should have this time. DMS were tailor made for each other. Their repertoire of tunes they played "Straight To The Heart," "Brazilian Love Affair," "Tutu," "The Dookie Stain," and "The Butt" among a few others already sounded good before, but with the three together in this contemporary period and after being able to refine their music to perfection after years of playing it, this is the best it ever sounded. The only thing one could hope for now is an album containing all the music they performed at this festival, played the same way with the same arrangements and backing personnel. DMS should never play apart from each other again.
And so that's how the show closed out, with a bang. The audience left standing on their feet calling for an encore and not getting one. Everyone was left wanting more. So they'll have to wait until next year.