Artist: MASABUMI KIKUCHI Title: BLACK ORPHEUS Released: 01 Apr 2016 Recorded live October 26, 2012 at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Recital Hall Recording Director: Satoshi Takahashi Recording Engineer: Masatroshi Muto System Engineer: Shinya Tanaka (SCI) Mixed at Raibow Studio, Oslo by Manfred Eicher and Jan Erik Kongshaug (engineer) Cover Photo: Fotini Potamia Liner Photos: Abby Kikuchi Design by Sascha Kleiss Produced by Manfred Eicher Genre: Jazz Length: 72:49 Label: ECM (2459) ***Commentary from https://www.ecmrecords.com/catalogue/1458047017/black-orpheus-masabumi-kikuchi: A document of a 2012 Japanese solo recital – not only the last in his homeland but the last anywhere – by idiosyncratic improviser Masabumi Kikuchi (1939-2015). One of the uncategorisable greats, Kikuchi occupied his own musical universe and in his final years was quietly and systematically severing his ties to jazz, drifting instead towards what he called ‘floating sound and harmonies’, introspective and poetic improvisations. Song forms still sometimes materialized. Kikuchi revisits “Little Abi”, a ballad for his daughter, which the pianist once recorded with Elvin Jones. And there is a surprising and very touching version of the wistfully yearning theme from the 1959 Brazilian film Black Orpheus. BACKGROUND Black Orpheus features music drawn from the last solo recital of a highly individual artist, the Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi (1939-2015). It represents the full flowering of Kikuchi’s late style, with an individuality which resists concise summary. For Masabumi, the Tokyo recording proposed “a new approach to the solo piano formation.” “His playing had a kind of cloistered originality”, Ben Ratliff suggested in a New York Times obituary, “with long silences, and a keyboard touch that could be delicate or combative.” Fellow pianist Jacob Sacks, like Kikuchi an associate of the late Paul Motian, wrote in 2015 that Masabumi “was easily one of the most original artists working in sound and music…I think that what he achieved musically (especially in the past ten to fifteen years) is both in an individualistic sense and in terms of artistic bravery on a par with Monk. All of us who play creative music on the piano should be aware of his accomplishments. His art was one of incredibly strong convictions…He took real musical risks and found things most of us can only dream of finding.” The music on the Tokyo recording is for the most part delicate and space conscious, and moves by its own inner laws of logic. Kikuchi spoke about chasing an elusive “floating sound”, unconnected to anybody’s musical history but his own, but in the Tokyo concert is open to the prompting of his imagination which brings him gradually – we hear a couple of hints of the melody earlier – to a beautifully realized version of the Luiz Bonfá and Antônio Maria song “Black Orpheus”, otherwise known as “Manhã de Carnaval” or, in Sinatra’s version, “A Day In The Life Of A Fool”. The concert encore is “Little Abi”, written for Kikuchi’s daughter and, as Ethan Iverson writes in the liner notes, “celebrated as an important work in Japan ever since the first recording with Gene Perla and Elvin Jones many years before.” * Born 1939 in Tokyo, Masabumi Kikuchi played with Lionel Hampton and Sonny Rollins while still a teenager, and made his recording debut in the early 1960s with Toshiko Akiyoshi and Charlie Mariano. In the 1970s he collaborated with Gil Evans and Elvin Jones and led his own groups, in both acoustic and electric modes, variously drawing influence from Miles Davis and Stockhausen, from Duke Ellington and Ligeti and Takemitsu. Kikuchi was amongst a small group of musicians with whom Miles Davis would confer in his post-Agharta retirement period, and he contributed to a still-unissued session with Miles, Larry Coryell and others, in 1978. Several of Kikuchi’s 1980s recordings were devoted to the synthesizer, but by the 1990s he was again emphasizing acoustic piano, founding the group Tethered Moon with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian. Motian, in particular, encouraged Kikuchi’s experimental tendencies, and was pleased to feature Masabumi Kikuchi in his own groups. Motian was also on hand for Kikuchi’s sole ECM studio album, Sunrise, as was bassist Thomas Morgan. All About Jazz described the album as “sparse, abstract and forged on the spur of the moment, but with a Zen-like beauty: atonal, sublime and powerful.” Jazziz noted the album’s emotional undercurrents: “For all its freedom and space, the music is filled with tension, as if Kikuchi were carrying some great burden through his search for enlightenment.” The release of Sunrise in 2012 provided a context for Kikuchi to play in Japan again, where the music of Black Orpheus was recorded in October of that year, in the responsive acoustics of the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Recital Hall, a space originally designed for chamber music. Back in his New York loft, a home base since the 1970s, Masabumi Kikuchi continued to work on the music. He withdrew from public performance but, with ECM’s support, made numerous recordings at home, both of solo piano meditations and group improvisations with a circle of younger associates including Thomas Morgan, guitarist Todd Neufeld, and saxophonist Michaël Attias, who helped him in the quest for new shapes and forms in spontaneous music-making. He died on July 6, 2015. ***Tracklisting: 01. Tokyo Part I 5:52 02. Tokyo Part II 3:57 03. Tokyo Part III 5:33 04. Tokyo Part IV 7:27 05. Tokyo Part V 5:05 06. Black Orpheus (Manhã de Carnaval) 8:17 Music By – Antônio Maria, Luiz Bonfá 07. Tokyo Part VI 6:38 08. Tokyo Part VII 7:38 09. Tokyo Part VIII 6:30 10. Tokyo Part IX 7:09 11. Little Abi 7:43 All compositions by Masabumi Kikuchi except where noted Total duration: 72:49 ***Musician: Masabumi Kikuchi: Piano ***Review from http://www.allmusic.com/album/black-orpheus-mw0002928244: AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek 4 stars out 5 Of the albums pianist Masabumi Kikuchi released as a leader or participated in as a sideman, few, if any, are as personal and revelatory as Black Orpheus. Recorded solo at the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Recital Hall in 2012, it was his final such outing. In his liner notes, pianist Ethan Iverson -- who admits he was not initially convinced of Kikuchi's gifts -- states that, "The best of Masabumi has extraordinary vulnerability and corresponding extraordinary magic." Kikuchi was an outsider artist, determined to follow his own way no matter the cost. And he did. Black Orpheus reveals that Kikuchi's iconoclastic path may have been worth it. Displayed here, the concert unfolds almost continuously as a series of improvisations. They reveal that Kikuchi's fierce dedication to discovering his own voice on the piano was a rigorous, almost ascetic practice. That evening, Kikuchi had an instructional reminder taped to his piano: "Play slower. I sound better when I play slower." Beginning with "Tokyo, Pt. 1," we hear the culmination of a lifetime of concentration in developing a slavish devotion to hearing and playing the right note at the right time with correct force and timbre. The show is a determined renunciation of influences and statement of self-discovery. Nothing is rushed. His self-imposed restraint creates space and openness around an ever unfolding musical journey; one that moves beyond any self-imposed boundary. While that first part employs more single notes than chord voicings. "Tokyo, Pt. 2" uses slightly angular sonorities of note clusters, percussive pedal pushes, the sounds of his feet moving against the floor, and breathing, as they contrast with middle-register arpeggios. Together they are an ascendant reach for balance and perfection. The beauty in "Pt. 3" is so halting through its first two-thirds that, when he introduces circular phrasing in a harmonic discovery, the listener is startled. The album's centerpiece is a staggering, intimate deconstruction and remarkable revisioning -- note by note, tone by tone -- of the title theme ("Manhã de Carnaval: Theme from Black Orpheus") by Luiz Bonfa. Kikuchi finds not only the haunted romance that lies at the tune's heart, but also mysterious metaphysics. He cracks the surface for transformation and poses the possibility of intent underneath what is known. "Tokyo, Pt. 9" is quietly processional, but offers a nearly inscrutable devotion to in-the-moment discovery that results not in resolution, but realization. The album-closer, "Little Abi," is a composition for his daughter he had recorded 40 years before with Elvin Jones. The lithe swing and song-like whimsy in the original have been replaced by a skeletal lyric line. The intent is one of reflection and pure, devoted tenderness. The process of placement and the choral statements are more open to question than statement and resolution; they're poignant, emotionally resonant. His nearly inscrutable devotion to in-the-moment perception results in realization. This album is not an epitaph for Kikuchi, but an entryway. ***Review from https://www.allaboutjazz.com/black-orpheus-masabumi-kikuchi-ecm-records-review-by-dan-mcclenaghan.php: Masabumi Kikuchi: Black Orpheus By DAN MCCLENAGHAN Published: May 30, 2016 5 stars out 5 Masabumi Kikuchi: Black OrpheusBlack Orpheus, the solo piano CD from Japanese-born pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, may be the starkest, loneliest music in the world. Masabumi Kikuchi (1939-2015) was a versatile, if ultimately idiosyncratic artist. Early in his career he worked with a panoply of mainstream music makers, everyone from drummer Elvin Jones, to producer arranger Gil Evans, tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson and pianist/composer Mal Waldron. But he prove...
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