Jazz for aficionados

That shows you got good taste. Do you have Nancy and George Shearing?



          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8u_S7H8W4A


            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbrVv2AggjE



Nancy is too beautiful for words.



Enjoy the music.

This is a very special "Round Midnight", it's the one before Wes became famous; if you notice it has a different sound. This is my favorite.


                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1Xozvcf0FA



Enjoy the music.

Tsuyoshi Yamamoto "midnight sugar" jazz piano.   Tell me what you think everyone.   

calvinj, thank you for the introduction to Tsuyosi Yamamoto; I was not familiar with this player.

****Tell me what you think everyone.****

Some may balk at this idea, but in my opinion, because jazz is a uniquely American creation, jazz players of a different nationality will inevitably bring their own cultural flavor to the music. This is certainly not to say that there aren’t very good non-American jazz players; quite the contrary. However, in my opinion, the best non-American jazz players don’t try to sound "American", but instead embrace the broader spirit of jazz; freedom of self-expression and creativity while embracing their own unique cultural flavor. I’m not sure Yamamoto accomplishes this.

From a technical standpoint, Yamamoto is clearly well versed in the language of jazz. He favors the highest registers of the piano keyboard. His time feel is not always consistently relaxed and there is a sense of "rushing" through the music at times; especially when he, as he is prone to do, repeats a single note several times. His attack is a bit "hard" at times, going back and forth between deliberate and obvious "delicate" attack of notes and hard percussive attacks.

From a stylistic standpoint, I find his playing most convincing when he is NOT playing the blues and plays standards like "I’m A fool To Want You". When he plays the blues, and in keeping with my previous comments about not trying to sound "American", his playing is full of blues cliches. The main feeling I am left with is that he sounds pretty good at any five seconds in time, but there is no sense of "the big picture" of a solo. A great player always gives the listener a convincing sense that the solo is going somewhere, of shape, and that one "lick" is somehow and logically connected to the one that came before it and the one the follows. When I listen to Yamamoto playing the blues it sounds like a bunch of unconnected blues licks giving the music a strangely static feeling; like it’s not going anywhere.

Glad to have been introduced to his playing; but I think I’ll pass.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ax4HFrdwm50

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka8GEJ_ed04

In Re to Tsuyoshi Yamamoto and the "blues"; after someone hears the blues, and attempts to play the blues, they quite often come up short; that's because one has to "feel" the blues in order to play the blues; otherwise it comes across as an imitation of the blues.

I can only compare that to me preparing a Japanese dish from a recipe in a cook book, and a Japanese chef preparing the same dish; while mine might be acceptable, the chef's would be so much better. Since you're accustomed to eating the same dish prepared by the chef, mine might not even be acceptable.

From a technical point of view, Mr. Yamamoto's is quite good I think; but a lot of jazz requires "soul"; that's the indefinable something that separates the best from the rest.

In my humble opinion, Japanese jazz musicians sound best, when they incorporate Japanese soul into American jazz.




Enjoy the music.