ARP Music

Expatriate Japanese pianist Akemi Kuniyoshi is not as well-known as Irène Schweizer or Marilyn Crispell, but she should be — if for no other reason than this recording with reedman Paul Moss and percussionist Russell Lambert. Their nine improvisations here highlight a different side of the new jazz improv scene, one based in melodic ideas and several scalar ideas simultaneously. Kuniyoshi is a deep student of world music, and it shows in this trio. Her melodies can come from the Far East such as her native Japan; the Near East of Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and Russia; or the West. The models for this trio are Toshiko Akiyoshi's first trio or the Jimmy Giuffre 3 with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow. Melody and contrapuntal harmony are the primary resources of this band's creative overflow: On "Elegiac for Charles Fox," listeners hear the sounds of the Amazonian jungle tribes playing melody against a Western classical motif undercut by Moss' harmonica, and then his tenor with an atonal series of grunts and snarls that hover in sharp contrast to Kuniyoshi's overtonal pianism. Elsewhere, on "First Peace," the post-bop jazz motif is outlined by Moss in his elegant soprano solo, before Kuniyoshi enters with Lambert following on shakers and African thumb piano. The theme is one from the early Yusef Lateef book, where the Eastern scales of Japan and Korea are layered against standard rhythm and open-D tuning on the piano. The more intense the saxophone solos, the softer the piano and percussion become, creating a large space between them, to be filled only with the melodic richness of the tune. And Kuniyoshi's solo pieces offer that spaciousness as well. In "Small Time," she conjures two melodic frameworks and two contrapuntal responses with both hands, all of them going at once, indelibly marking the melody on the listener as the counterpoint opens another dimension for it to inhabit. Likewise, on the nine-minute "The Spiraling," she carries an idea from Mahler and transmutes it first through Stravinsky, then Ives, and finally Ellington, before whispering it out with Bill Evans. The themes are hers, the harmonics are hers, and so are the melodies and counterpoint; the theory and inspiration belong to her influences. ARP Music is among the finest records Leo Feigin has ever issued. And this trio — particularly its leader and pianist Kuniyoshi — is criminally underheard. This album is a great opportunity; a virtual revolution in music, do not pass it by.