Having been called the "hurricane on the piano" and the national treasure of Japanese jazz musicians, Yosuke Yamashita is paying a visit for a hurricane-like solo concert in Taipei.
For the Taipei concert next Thursday at the National Concert Hall, Yamashita especially composed a song inspired from three Taiwanese folk songs. The new song, entitled Graceful Illusion, will be a first-time performance in Taipei.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Having released more than 40 jazz albums, Yamashita is a household name in Japan. Beginning his solo career since 1969, inspired by free-style jazz musician Cecil Taylor, Yamashita has established his own performing style since the beginning of the 1970s.
He began touring throughout Europe in 1974 and has made annual appearances at the club Sweet Basil since 1988. Yamashita's explosive piano-playing style was hailed by Jon Pareles of the New York Times, for his 1985 New York debut at Sweet Basil.
"He could slip in and out of stride rhythms or be-bop filigree at will -- aggressive playing tempered with just enough melodic finesse," Pareles wrote in his review.
Yamashita himself categorizes his performance as somewhere in between jazz and improvised classical music. "When I played with other musicians, I feel I'm a jazz musician. But when I play solo, I'm more like a composition musician like Bach or Mozart. As long as I'm given a theme, I try to compose a 20-minute long song with good structure," he said.
Yamashita said his music is influenced by renowned American jazz musicians such as Thelonious Monk, Mal Waldron, Bud Powell and Hampton Hawes. But he is most inspired by Cecil Taylor. "His music gave me so much inspiration and encouragement. In a way I was `kicked' by his music impact."
Like Taylor, free-style performances are one of the main features of Yamashita's piano style. "I am still looking for the real freedom in music," he said.
Along with his frequent solo piano
concerts, Yamashita has also been performing in sessions of various music genres. He has played with Japanese percussion group "Kodo", Korean percussion group "Samul-Nori," and with prestigious Japanese percussionist Eitetsu Hayashi.
For the song Graceful Illusion, which Yamashita especially created for Taiwan, Yamashita combined three Taiwanese folk songs -- The Rural Village (
He transformed the melodies and rhythm patterns of the original songs by a jazz method and made improvisations on it.
"I was told that in the song Clinging Coins there contains lyrics and images related to the trains, so I put train sounds in the midst of the tune," Yamashita said. "For the final theme, I adopted a technique repeating the pattern again and again, but shortening it gradually. This is the brand new expression I never did before. And I'm very satisfied with it."
Apart from Graceful Illusion, Yamashita will also perform four of his original songs, selected from his well-received 1975 album, Breathtake. He will also give his personal interpretations on two classical tunes: Maurice Ravel's Bolero and the Piano Concerto No.2 by Sergei Rachmaninov.
Performance notes:
What: Yosuke Yamashita's Jazz Piano Concert
Where: National Concert Hall
When: 7:30pm, Sept. 9
Tickets: NT$400 to NT$1200, available at ERA Ticketing outlets
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