Aki Takase - Hokusai Piano Solo (Live) (2019) [Official Digital Download]

Aki Takase, the Berlin-based pianist, is one of the great personalities of modern jazz. Moments of freedom, form and humour characterize this stylistically versatile avant-gardist, the stubborn virtuoso who toys with jazz traditions. In the year of her 70th birthday, Aki Takase was honoured with The Berlin Jazz Prize. Recorded over two days at the Sendesaal Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, the album includes some pieces captured live during the award ceremony, and some recorded in a studio setting in the same historic room.

The piece Bach Factory features Alexander von Schlippenbach as a guest and the Japanese author Yoko Tawada appears on Hokahoka Hokosai. Aki Takase is inspired by the Japanese painter Katsushika Hokusai. For Aki Takase, Hokusai was a hugely passionate and brilliant artist with an experimental mind who lived only with and for his paintings. »Hokusai showed so many directions in painting, which is why I wanted to convey various colours in improvisation. Music is like a colour. For me, red and light-blue are gentle colours. These were the colours that I felt. That’s my internal landscape. I feel a strong connection to Hokusai.«

Tracklist:
1. Crane
2. Hokusais Meer
3. Bach Factory
4. Live in Dream
5. Nihon Bridge in Edo
6. Hokusai Manga
7. Sketch of Spring
8. Studies of Gesture
9. Cherry
10. Silent Landscape
11. Dr. Beat
12. Hokahoka Hokusai

Personnel:
Aki Takase, piano, celesta