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Dave Brubeck Quartet Jazz Impressions of Japan Jazzmp3 320h33tschon55

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Dave Brubeck Quartet - Jazz Impressions of Japan
Time: 35:01
Bitrate: 320 kbps

Recorded at CBS Studios;
New York, New York between January 30, 1960 and June 17, 1964.
Originally released on Columbia {9012}.

Thirteen years into their tenure, the Dave Brubeck Quartet was still able to mine the creative vein for new means of expression. Despite the hits and popularity on college campuses, or perhaps because of it, Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright, and Joe Morello composed a restless band with a distinctive sound. These eight tracks, all based on a tour of Japan the year before, were, in a sense, Brubeck fulfilling a dictum from his teacher, the French composer Darius Milhaud, who exhorted him to "travel the world and keep your ears open." The sketches Brubeck and Desmond created all invoke the East, particularly the folk melodies of Japan directly, while still managing to use the Debussian impressionistic approach to jazz that kept them riding the charts and creating a body of music that, while playing into the exotica craze of the moment, was still jazz composed and played with integrity. The gorgeous modal blues that uses Eastern scale whole tones with Western harmonic notions — chromatically — that comprise the melody and solo frameworks for Desmond in "Fujiyama" are a beautiful contrast to the relatively straight-ahead ballad style featured on "Zen Is When," with its 4/4 time sling rhythm and simple melody — extrapolated by Brubeck in purely Japanese whole tone scale on the harmony. Also, the shimmer and whisper of "The City Is Crying," where Desmond's solo is one of the most beautiful of his career, using arpeggios as half tones to reach down into the middle of his horn's register and play harmonically a counterpoint that is as painterly as it is poignant. On "Osaka Blues," Brubeck once again reaches for an oriental scale to play a modal blues à la Miles Davis with Wynton Kelly; Desmond responds by playing straight post-bop Bluesology with even a squeak or two in his solo. In all, Jazz Impressions of Japan is one of the great forgotten Brubeck records. Its sweetness is tempered with musical adventure and the improvisational experience only a band that had been together 13 years could provide. It's truly wonderful. ~ AMG


Listening to "Jazz Impressions of Japan" is like taking a trip back in time to Japan in the early sixties, around the very time Mr. Brubeck was getting those impressions and translating them into music. Which is kind of incredible, because only the last track {"Koto Song"--an ingenious fusion of fine koto melodies from Kyoto and jazz improvisation} explicitly adapts actual Japanese music in a recognizable manner, but all of them capture the moods of this lively decade of Japan's history with startling vividness, and that despite the annoyingly inauthentic "gong" sound they insist on using here and there throughout. "The music we have prepared tries to convey these minute but lasting impressions, somewhat in the manner of classical haiku, wherein the poet expects the reader to feel the scene himself as an experience," Brubeck explains in the liner notes, and so he succeeded, at least in my case.

Incidentally, the haiku theme permeates the liner notes, with Brubeck cleverly appending an appropriate poem to each track, including ones by three of the greats of the Haiku tradition: Matsuo Basho, Kobayashi Issa, and Yosa Buson. In that sense too this album is a time capsule, for it captures the incipient American fascination with refined aspects of Japanese culture like haiku poetry and Zen philosophy right there as it was maturing in the cradle of the whole beatnik jazz scene and starting to take baby steps beyond. The oddly minimalist "Zen is When" is a perfect case in point, of course. But on the road from Tokyo to Osaka these Dharma Bums come dressed impeccably in suit and tie, ready to take you along with a musical high. ~ Amazon.com reviewer

Personnel:
Dave Brubeck {piano};
Paul Desmond {alto saxophone};
Eugene Wright {bass};
Joe Morello {drums}

Dave Brubeck Quartet - Jazz Impressions of Japan tracks:
01 Toyko Traffic {5:54}
02 Rising Sun {4:42}
03 Toki's Theme [from "Mr. Broadway"] {2:10}
04 Fujiyama {5:05}
05 Zen Is When {2:55}
06 The City Is Crying {6:03}
07 Osaka Blues {5:11}
08 Koto Song {3:01}

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