Somethin’ Cool – SCOL-1010 – 2015
Sumire Kuribayashi: piano
Hideaki Kanazawa: bass
Hiro Kimura: drums
Shun Ishiwaka: drums on 7, 8
Travel is a kind of experience that often is fulfilled through a meeting, between people or cultures, and a consequent exchange among the parts. It could also happen that the traveler decides to share and bring back such event through the way that better suits himself: showing some photos, discussing the most outstanding moments to friends or writing a travel journal.
Pianist Sumire Kuribayashi chooses to transfer her feelings and memories through music, endowing it with the narrative features that make it similar to an oral tale.
Belonging to the young generation of Japanese jazz scene, Kuribayashi has become in the last few years one of the most appreciated pianists both for her noteworthy creative qualities and the remarkable storytelling that crosses the textures of her music.
This second recording – released only one year later from Toys, her debut album – confirms Kuribayashi as a musician with ears and eyes always well open being able to translate in music her real-life experiences, as well as her latest travels, making them as the main subjects of this album.
Wild Tale opens the album with its waltz gait, exquisitely intriguing in the lightness of its autumnal colors evoked by both bass player Kanazawa, with an elegant and never intrusive backing, and the subtleties of drummer Hiro Kimura.
Each single suggestion, through Kuribayashi’s fingers, can become inspiration: the visit to a church, during an European journey, provides the opportunity to bring up to the surface her valuable classic influencies permeated with romanticism and Bachian echoes (La Carillion et la Petite Eglise). Here once more Kanazawa provides a support perfectly appropriate to the chosen style, often playing in counterpoint on the melodic lines of piano. Despite belonging to different generations, between Kuribayashi and Kanazawa, (an excellent and renowned veteran of Japanese jazz scene) a close relationship has been built up in which the bassist produces a solid support, often playing on subtraction, testifying his deep sensibility and long experience.
The great amount of creative spurs and energy received by the pianist during a music festival in Belgium come to surface in Da Da Da, one of the most dynamic tunes of the entire album, showing Kuribayashi’s rhythmic and improvisational fluency enriched by an hammering and driving rock-intinged section at the end of the tune.
Choosing to present a cover like Memories of Tomorrow, a composition from Jarrett’s solo album Köln Concert, was not an easy task as Kuribayashi herself humbly admits in the liner notes: «[…] I played this tune live many times, but now that I’ve decided to record it, I feel like I want to apologize with Jarrett[…]» Here the pianist’s rendition pays tribute very well to the great pianist keeping the original overall atmosphere, but adding her own music taste and the aforementioned compelling storytelling.
It’s again a travel, but this time virtual, to inspire the genesis of Irrawaddy River, a composition constructed around a melody belonging to the Burmese music tradition: interested in music from around the world, Kuribayashi came upon a Burmese dance song on the web and decided to work on a simple melodic idea suggested by it, consequently developing it until creating an extended composition with a humoral progression making it one of her first attempts in writing a suite.
Her ability and longing to tell a story is evident in her use of a singing whisper which, paying attention, can be heard here and there in the emotional surge of her playing.
Fascinating is also the idea around which Home Away from Home is constructed: a tune born from the sincere love for jazz that the pianist feels even if, as cited in the liner notes by herself «[…] as a Japanese person, I can’t affirm that jazz is deepened in my roots, but each time I play it I feel the same sensation of coming back home […]»
In the purest jazz tradition reinventing a tune again and again, trying each time to transform it into something new is a challenge that most of jazz musicians take. That’s what behind the choice of presenting again Forest and the Elf, already appeared on her debut album, here revisited at a faster pace, also due to the guest appearance of drummer Shun Ishiwaka, another rising star of Japanese scene.
Almost at the finishing line Wild Tale-Closing comes back taken at a more relaxed time and inspired, in execution and approach, to the listening of Charlie Haden and Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s duo recordings (a suggestion by bass player Kanazawa) embracing us with the languishing flavour of some Cuban ballads.
At the end of the album is Blame It on My Youth, one of Kuribayashi’s most loved and often live performed standard, played in a very intimate format solely accompanied by Kanazawa: «[…] We had the lights down in the studio, I invited Kanazawa closer to the piano and recorded it, looking in each other’s eyes […]» The best way to close an affecting music story that captivated us with its intriguing turns, while enjoying the warmth at the fire of its inspiration.
Links:
Travelin’ teaser www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogPSMJIa4Aw
The video of Home Away From Home