if you are into Lee Konitz then Humanity will interest you perhaps most. Tunes are by the alto saxophonist leader. It’s a studio album that was recorded in New York. Whirlwind in their description of the album note that it was made in a single day.
That’s pretty old school and certainly you could close your eyes and date this acoustic quartet affair to having been recorded not in the 21st century but somewhere around the middle of the 20th by players who seem to be reacting to the bebop revolution of the time.
It’s fair to say that the other hugely experienced players on the album are much better known than their leader even though Kazuki Yamanaka has had a few albums to his name already. Does that matter? Not really. But I suppose it is reassuring if you know at least someone’s sound to get your bearings when exploring a new album by an unknown. So the presence of bassist Cameron Brown, pianist Russ Lossing and drummer Billy Mintz is that lifebelt or comfort belt if you like as you leap into the unknown as a listener.
Yamanaka who hails from Saitama, Japan came over to America around 2012 when he arrived to study has 2 albums that I know of out before. The best one to look for is the one that Lossing and Brown were also on. It is called Dancer in Nirvana (2020).
The Japanese jazzer had emerged 5 years earlier with an album clunkily called Songs Unconscious-minded that had a starry cast including the brilliant bassist Linda May Han Oh, genius of the guitar Gilad Hekselman and equally formidable pianist Fabian Almazan among its personnel.
Certainly if you like this new album, which is full of the leader’s tunes, and I largely do, you will be going to listen further to both these interesting early career releases.
As for the new one I liked the intensity of ‘Amalgamator’ most. But the album isn’t at all as stark and serious as this miniature epic. So the buoyant, jolly ramshackle feel of ‘It May Happen’ is fun and something of a contrast. Brown’s soloing here is some of his best work on the album. Yamanaka hasn’t got the scalding edge you sometimes find on a Lee Konitz album. But he does share the similar sense of scalar and chordal assault on tunes and like the Milesian Birth of the Cool legend Konitz can solo so sensitively it stops you in your tracks. If out driving you will be looking for a convenient lay-by to pull over, switch off the engine and listen for all the details you just know are there and demand proper attention.
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