NATSUKI TAMURA - Koki Solo
Libra Records CD 101-066
Natsuki Tamura: – trumpet, piano, wok, voice
Recorded at his home in Kobe City, November 14, 2020
Natsuki Tamura graduated at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music; he went on to develop his music in New York, Tokyo and his home town, Kobe. Koki Solo recognises and celebrates Tamura’s 70th birthday, for which the opening track, Sekirei, provides a studied reference work of soaring accumulations of gorgeous airs interspersed with grating growls and grimaces. His introductory trumpet solo to the works is truly self-assured. Koki Solo is also a showcase of improvised work recalled from years of performing practice and inexorable inquisitiveness: whether with trumpet, piano, wok or voice, he shows the true passion and precision of any master improvisor. They seem to be working with a different set of rules, but are actually seeing their music from an entirely different perspective than the average artist and the tale they tell is constructed in real time – it is live.
Solo trumpet is a formidable challenge, so bizarre a format even in jazz music that it requires significant bravado. Tamura is an experienced solo performer who understands how to moderate the avant-garde with a level of jazz lyricism and he is always attentive, intangible, poetic, quirky and startling. These qualities underlie his distinctive, musical lexis and are clearly distinguished in the abstract trumpet solo, Sagi, constructed from an auditory paint board of smothered hisses and hoots, clangs, screeches and yells. Throughout the percussion pieces, the wok is more likely an entire batterie de cuisine, as Tamura attempts to construct a new-sound dictionary.
He does ‘have-a-go-at’ the piano, doubtless encouraged by his virtuoso-piano-player-wife, Satoko Fujii, though there is no match and certainly no competition. His piano approach therefore suggests a lack of confidence. It is investigative, unsettled and unsophisticated, aimed rather at being full of fun. This is most clearly illustrated in the closing track Isoshigi in which any inadequacies at the piano are masked by his burbling, gurgling, trilling or shrieking through his vocal folds. All of which may be interpreted as fun, along with his feverish, frantic and percussive attack on the keys themselves.
Everything that is heard is significant. Tamura wastes no words, no notes, not even a rattle and even the spaces in between have meaning, import. Tamura exposes himself to his public’s view, as must any solo musician. This is not his first such experience and it benefits from that, of course, but equally from his direct approach and emotive simplicity.
Tamura has been compared with trumpeters Lester Bowie, Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard though I haven’t yet heard sufficient of his work to leap to that conclusion. Nevertheless, he is a very fine musician and Koki Solo will repay many visits.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Libra Records CD 101-066
Natsuki Tamura: – trumpet, piano, wok, voice
Recorded at his home in Kobe City, November 14, 2020
Natsuki Tamura graduated at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music; he went on to develop his music in New York, Tokyo and his home town, Kobe. Koki Solo recognises and celebrates Tamura’s 70th birthday, for which the opening track, Sekirei, provides a studied reference work of soaring accumulations of gorgeous airs interspersed with grating growls and grimaces. His introductory trumpet solo to the works is truly self-assured. Koki Solo is also a showcase of improvised work recalled from years of performing practice and inexorable inquisitiveness: whether with trumpet, piano, wok or voice, he shows the true passion and precision of any master improvisor. They seem to be working with a different set of rules, but are actually seeing their music from an entirely different perspective than the average artist and the tale they tell is constructed in real time – it is live.
Solo trumpet is a formidable challenge, so bizarre a format even in jazz music that it requires significant bravado. Tamura is an experienced solo performer who understands how to moderate the avant-garde with a level of jazz lyricism and he is always attentive, intangible, poetic, quirky and startling. These qualities underlie his distinctive, musical lexis and are clearly distinguished in the abstract trumpet solo, Sagi, constructed from an auditory paint board of smothered hisses and hoots, clangs, screeches and yells. Throughout the percussion pieces, the wok is more likely an entire batterie de cuisine, as Tamura attempts to construct a new-sound dictionary.
He does ‘have-a-go-at’ the piano, doubtless encouraged by his virtuoso-piano-player-wife, Satoko Fujii, though there is no match and certainly no competition. His piano approach therefore suggests a lack of confidence. It is investigative, unsettled and unsophisticated, aimed rather at being full of fun. This is most clearly illustrated in the closing track Isoshigi in which any inadequacies at the piano are masked by his burbling, gurgling, trilling or shrieking through his vocal folds. All of which may be interpreted as fun, along with his feverish, frantic and percussive attack on the keys themselves.
Everything that is heard is significant. Tamura wastes no words, no notes, not even a rattle and even the spaces in between have meaning, import. Tamura exposes himself to his public’s view, as must any solo musician. This is not his first such experience and it benefits from that, of course, but equally from his direct approach and emotive simplicity.
Tamura has been compared with trumpeters Lester Bowie, Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard though I haven’t yet heard sufficient of his work to leap to that conclusion. Nevertheless, he is a very fine musician and Koki Solo will repay many visits.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
