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| 4.161 Ft
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| 1. | Prologue
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| 2. | Part I
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| 3. | Part II
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| 4. | Part III
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| 5. | Homage to Puccini
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| 6. | Ballad
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| 7. | Blues for Tosca
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| 8. | Part IV
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Jazz / Post-Bop
Recorded: December 14-15, 2002, Hit Factory, New York, New York
Experiencing Tosca is the trio's sixth CD; they've been getting together on an irregular basis since 1990. The core of their discography is three tribute albums: "Play Kurt Weill" from 1995, "Play Jimi Hendrix" from 1997, and "Chansons d'Edith Piaf", made in 1999 - highly concentrated, intimate recordings that were universally praised. Experiencing Tosca marks a further development in the band, involving free use of themes from Puccini's opera Tosca. Masabumi Kikuchi, the trio's driving force, actually reckons that this is the best Tethered-Moon CD so far.
The history behind the project is just as unusual as the result. "Al Foster and Gil Evans had recommended me to Miles Davis", Kikuchi relates. "I visited him at home, and he had stuck copies of the piano reduction of Tosca all over the walls, from the second floor right down to the bottom; on the staircase, on the walls - everywhere there was Tosca. I don't know how long it hung there. Miles was a really crazy guy. Gil and he wanted to do Tosca, but somehow it never happened. Later, when I was in the band, they kept talking about it, but Miles was getting interested in pop. He didn't want to go back. Then, many years later, I got hold of the music and started playing it. Just to myself. And after a few more years, when I was to make a new disc for Winter & Winter, Paul came over to my place and we talked about what we could play. I played him one of the arias. And he said straight away: let's do it."
Experiencing Tosca is no opera arrangement, nor is it a concept album. The opera and its plot have no significance for Kikuchi. Actually, the Japanese New Yorker doesn't like opera, because, so he says, the visual aspect undermines his imagination. "We simply met and started playing. And called the first piece: Homage to Puccini. It went well; we liked it. Then I said: let's play a blues: Blues for Tosca."
Giacomo Puccini's verismo three-acter, premiered in Rome in 1900, may be one of the most famous and successful of all operas, but one doesn't need to know the plot to understand this music. One can be enchanted by the trio's "Homage to Puccini" without having the faintest idea where the famous tenor aria "E lucevan le stelle" ("And the stars shone") fits in the story of the opera: namely that the painter Cavaradossi, awaiting his execution, is thinking back on the time spent with his beloved Tosca. The same is true of "Part IV", based on Tosca's lament "Vissi d'Arte, vissi d'amore" ("My life was devoted only to beauty").
The remaining five pieces - plus an intro - are freely improvised. Melody lines and fragments from Puccini's late-Romantic masterpiece flare up time after time; for instance, the strikingly cheerful "E sempre lava!" provides the theme of "Part III". But they simply give an impetus to the trio's imagination and cooperation. "We start with themes, but if I hear something else with my inner ear, then I turn off somewhere else in my playing, and the other two are good enough to follow me. Paul never rehearses with us. He said at the start: I don't need rehearsals. And he was right. We never know what he's going to play. And I don't even want to know. That's fantastic. - Gary and I do work together. Sometimes he supports me, or I him, sometimes we play off against one another. The music between Gary and me is like a prism. If one changes the angle, the colour changes. Sometimes, when it's not working, we have no light, and there's nothing to see. But mainly it's fantastic. We let it flow completely freely. It's an unbelievably direct way of expressing oneself."
It's their attitude to music, to free yet sparse, concentrated playing, that links these three old masters. This mixture of thematic working and free improvisation gives rise to sonic areas of enchanting beauty, and dense harmonic and rhythmic textures, tender and fragile, meditative but also energetic, introverted yet accessible to anyone, that open hearts and ears. In the three years since recording the Edith Piaf album, Kikuchi, Peacock and Motion hadn't played together. And whether these three loners will appear live before making the next CD recording, heaven alone knows. All the more reason to be grateful for Experiencing Tosca.
Masabumi Kikuchi, born 1939 in Tokyo, studied music at Tokyo University from 1955 to 1958. In the 60s he toured Japan with Lionel Hampton and Sonny Rollins, recorded with Charlie Mariano, and in 1968 gained a Down-Beat scholarship to Berklee College in Boston. Since then he has swung to and from between the USA and Japan, residing in New York since the mid-70s. He has worked with musicians like Elvin Jones, Gary Peacock, Gil Evans, Terumasa Hino, McCoy Tyner and, time after time, Sonny Rollins. In the 90s he also became involved in DJ-music and avant-garde fusion. He seldom performs live.
Gary Peacock, born 1935, is one of the most significant bass players in modern jazz. In the course of the 60s, playing in groups led by Jimmy Giuffre, Roland Kirk, Bill Evans, Paul Bley, George Russell, Albert Ayler or Roswell Rudd, he steadily liberated the bass from its role as a harmonic foundation, making it an equally privileged melody instrument. From 1969 to 1972 he lived in Japan, after which he withdrew from the music scene for four years to study biology. Since then he has recorded several discs under his own name, working with musicians like Jan Garbarek, Ralph Towner and Bill Frisell. Along with Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette, he is part of one of the most successful trios in contemporary jazz.
The percussionist Paul Motion, born 1931 in Philadelphia, also ranks among the greatest innovators on his instrument. Certainly, if necessary, Motion will play with a swinging groove, but mainly he detached himself from the traditional task of keeping the rhythm, and acts within a group as a partner with equal rights to rhythmic, melodic and timbral freedom. From 1959 to 1963 he, Scott LaFaro and Bill Evans formed what is now regarded as the latter's most important trio, and then he worked with (among others) Paul Bley, Charlie Haden, Archie Shepp and Keith Jarrett. He was offered the position of second drummer with John Coltrane, but refused it. Since his 1972 debut, he has recorded numerous albums under his own name, often in trio combinations with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano. His Electric Bebop Band, with the unusual line-up of two saxophones, two electric guitars, bass and percussion, turned out to be an important foundry for talents in the 90s: Kurt Rosenwinkel, Chris Potter, Chris Cheek and Joshua Redman all emerged from it. Since 1988 he has recorded for JMT Productions and Winter & Winter.
- Arnt Cobbers (Translated by Richard Toop)
Tethered Moon
Masabumi Kikuchi - piano
Gary Peacock - bass
Paul Motian - drums |
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