Thread: Attack of Japanese Jazz??

Posts: 7

Post by mwagner1962 November 8, 2006 (1 of 7)
Wow,

What a jump in the number of SACD titles due to Japanese jazz SACD!!!!!

Incredible, and so much from Sony, the very people who seemed hell bent on nearly killing the format some time back!!!

Interesting indeed....

Cheers

Post by Claude November 8, 2006 (2 of 7)
These Sony titles are in fact a batch of reissues from Three Blind Mice, an audiophile label that recorded japanese jazz artists in the 1970's.

Post by DrZhivago November 8, 2006 (3 of 7)
Claude said:

These Sony titles are in fact a batch of reissues from Three Blind Mice, an audiophile label that recorded japanese jazz artists in the 1970's.

Any of those worth picking up?
My credit card is ready :):)

Cheers

Post by mwagner1962 November 8, 2006 (4 of 7)
Claude said:

These Sony titles are in fact a batch of reissues from Three Blind Mice, an audiophile label that recorded japanese jazz artists in the 1970's.

Ahhhh...

Okay!!

Cheers,

Post by Julien November 8, 2006 (5 of 7)
DrZhivago said:

Any of those worth picking up?
My credit card is ready :):)

Cheers

Rather familiar with Japanese playing, I would say that especially in the 70s, imitation and not much creativity should be about most of it. It is the same with Suzuki's Bach recordings: not much creativity, no deep understanding of the style or the essence of the musical language (still a cultural problem I believe), and rather stiff musically, because they are afraid of taking initiatives that might be stylistically wrong while studying a style that isn't in their blood for most of them (Chinese musicians I talk with have told me about this problem many times, this is how they feel too)... To put it in a nutshell they hardly use the flexibility of time that basically is the key to natural phrasing in music. Which is very important even in a jazz beat...

But: the basic technical-musical level is usually very high, and the recording standard even higher. Still high quality, but if you need the artists' creativity or genius to "speak" to you, then you might want to find a few reviews about those who have a "great musician" reputation.

Hope I can be a little helpful.

Post by Claude November 9, 2006 (6 of 7)
DrZhivago said:

Any of those worth picking up?
My credit card is ready :):)

Cheers

Unfortunately, I haven't heard any of these albums (some of which have been reissued on audiophile LPs and CDs a few times).

Terumasa Hino is an internationally established trumpeter and Matsumoto "Sleepy" Hidehiko had a reputation as the best japanese saxophonist in the 60's or 70's. The other artists are hardly known outside Japan or the audiophile scene.

Live! - Terumasa Hino Quintet
Sleepy - Matsumoto Hidehiko

The reason why these albums have been released on SACD seems to be that Three Blind Mice (TBM) made exceptionally sounding recordings, some of which have been popular demonstration records. These two for example:

Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio: Midnight Sugar
Blow Up - Isao Suzuki Trio Quartet

Some TBM links:

http://homepage1.nifty.com/ModernJazzNavigator/jazzdata/dtbm0.htm (with english discograhical details for some of the discs

http://www.tvz.com/TBM/ (official website, but useless)

Post by DrZhivago November 9, 2006 (7 of 7)
Thanks heaps for your replies guys.

I decided to take a plunge and pre-ordered 4 discs from November's batch at amazon.co.jp. See how we go.

Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio: Midnight Sugar
Unicorn - Teruo Nakamura
Blow Up - Isao Suzuki Trio Quartet
Ginparis Session - Masayuki Takayanagi



Regards

Closed