*Japanese music, fused with jazz
In playing two compositions with prepared piano at the Painted Bride Saturday night, pianist Shoko Nagai was touching on two interconnected traditions and entities. The gesture, almost inadvertently, gave homage to composer John Cage as well as to traditional Japanese music.
Japanese musicians have been playing jazz for eons now, and doing it very well. But few of them have actually delved into the Japanese culture, or attempted to fuse or integrate elements of Japanese music into their jazz.
But Nagai, who unveiled a new ensemble called Utakata ("ephemeral"), did just that. Nagai's compositions have an airy feel to them, an evocation of an earlier time in a locale that is exotic. But for the Japanese pianist, who admittedly did not dig deeply into her own cultural background for musical inspiration until relatively recently, the history of Japan provided a template.
Her composition "Procession" evoked the style of the Heian period, a period during which the Japanese developed theater and musical forms. Playing simple but delicate phrases on piano, Nagai was joined by percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, who tapped out rhythms on Japanese drums using jazz-style brush work. "Sho-o," also the name of a Japanese panpipe, again featured the group's two Japanese members, who exchanged long tones full of ornamentation and exploration.
The prepared piano piece, explained Takeishi, was meant to evoke a Zen Buddhist temple in Japan, and when Nagai strummed the interior of the instrument and played the middle register of the piano, the sound vibrated with indefinite pitch not often heard in Western music.
Nagai did take time to show some jazz chops. When she began laying down complicated, driving piano licks, mirrored by the ominous and sweet bass clarinet of Ned Rothenberg and Jennifer Choi's fierce violin, the structure of the composition took root. But there were still avant-garde surprises; at one point Takeishi's traditional taiko rhythms were broken up with Latin-style march kick figures; the percussionist and band would then resume the composition as if nothing unseemly had happened.

~By Kevin L. Carter
Philadelphia post ,May 7th 2006
For The Inquirer