Masabumi Kikuchi: Hanamichi

  The late Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi seems to have entranced everyone who ever met him or played with him. As saxophonist Greg Osby has noted, Kikuchi “can’t, or won’t, contour his thinking or approach to fit somebody’s ideal. You call him because you want what he offers.” He had a long career in Japan and the United States, and performed frequently with drummer Paul Motian starting in 1990. After hearing Kikuchi perform with Motian at the Village Vanguard in 2011, Sun Chung, a producer for ECM Records, struck up a friendship with the pianist that lasted until Kikuchi passed away in July 2015. Chung tried several times to organize a recording session, and was finally successful in December 2013. The resulting album, Hanamichi, is Kikuchi’s final studio recording, a solo effort. The program starts, improbably enough, with Mabel Wayne’s 1928 tune Ramona. This atomized rendition puts plenty of space into what was written as a waltz, allowing the listener to concentrate on Kikuchi’s gentle touch and mindful improvising. Up next is a piece that’s much more familiar to music fans, Gershwin’s Summertime. Kikuchi takes his time with the song, freely exploring the rich harmonies. Another well-known standard, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s My Favorite Things, appears in two versions. The first is loose and free, a meditation on the song’s structure. The second rendition is much sparser and supremely elegant. Ending the disc is Little Abi, a peaceful ballad written for his daughter, and per Kevin Whitehead’s informative liner note, a staple of his sets for decades. This version invests it with a nearly overwhelming tenderness. The album’s title comes from Kabuki theater. A hanamichi is a narrow raised platform which crosses the auditorium and connects the back of the hall to the stage. Sun Chung tells us in a liner note that in contemporary Japanese, the term “indicates the perfect way to end a career, the honorable way to leave a stage ...” This deeply inspirational music is a fitting capstone to Kikuchi’s remarkable life in music, and an impressive start to Chung’s new Red Hook Records imprint. Highest recommendation! 

Red Hook 1001; Masabumi Kikuchi (p); NYC, December 2013; Ramona/ Summertime/ My Favorite Things I/ My Favorite Things II/ Improvisation/ Little Abi; 41:08.  redhookrecords.com