TimeMachine Records – TMCD-1012 – 2018
Takanori Suzuki: clarinet, bass clarinet
Satoshi Aikawa: guitar
Tetsuro Aratama: upright bass
While most of Japanese jazz musicians relate with history and major styles of American jazz, like be bop and hard bop, few others prefer to follow and draw inspiration from diverse musical traditions which share with jazz the same attitude, room for improvisation and rhythm feeling.
It’s the case of clarinet player Takanori Suzuki who, from his activity base in Osaka, focuses his eyes somewhere else in search for different spurs inside the vast universe of jazz.
In this second release with his trio is indeed possible to listen to the many music references, coming from different areas around the world, which Suzuki and his partners never present as a mere excercise in style, but redefine as authors of all the music.
A basic factor so that the suggestion of this music journey is accomplished is the presence of Satoshi Aikawa and Tetsuro Aratama, respectively guitarist and upright bass player, whereas the first one moves confidently among bright Mediterranean-tinged sonorities, swift flamenco phrasings and South American echoes, while the second one knows how to provide the most suitable support enriching everything with pondered solos.
Outstanding proof of this is Esperanza, which opens the album with a dynamic and lively mood while setting the course, through the title and the language used for it, towards the Souths of the world to which the music of this trio seems to aim. Very beautiful is the introduction of the following Opus 1, a composition constantly taking shape playing with dynamics and timbre possibilities.
Sugiyuku Natsu, as told by the Japanese title, is a melancholic moderate three quarters farewell to a summer too suddenly passed by, Ange Cri, on the other hand, is an homage to Piazzolla’s tangoes, which the leader chooses to pay tribute to through the sensual nuances produced by the bass clarinet.
The only compositional contributions to Suzuki’s writing are Shousou (“impatience” in Japanese), written by Aikawa, with a serpentine and captivating melodic line and Aratama’s title track Paracca (a nonexistent word neologized by the members) set upon a “partido alto” rhythm, a subgenre of samba.
Lumière, inspired by that kind of hope that the clarinet player experiences when a ray of sun gleams through the clouds, closes the album.
The formal composure of Suzuki’s compositions, revealing his early apprenticeship as a classical musician, is mixed with a charming rhythmic elegance into which is easy to perceive the joyful pleasure that the clarinet player feels in playing with his bandmates.
Also the choice of the recording place (the Cosmic Hall concert hall in Katou, in the nearby of Osaka, usually used for Classical music concerts) contributes to the quality of sound sought by Suzuki, whose warm and incisive tones seem to stand as a vessel of a direct and sincere music expression.
Links:
Takanori Suzuki website: takanorisuzuki.net
Paracca digest: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIRT3-4HCwAe
Takanori Suzuki Trio live performance: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd_ZHkFuwjo
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