Eric Schaefer - Kyoto Mon Amour (2017) [Official Digital Download 24/88]

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Eric Schaefer - Kyoto Mon Amour (2017) [Official Digital Download 24/88]

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Eric Schaefer - Kyoto Mon Amour (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time - 49:55 minutes | 921 MB
Studio Master, Official Digital Download | Artwork: Digital booklet

The music of “Kyoto mon Amour” is improvised in both the Japanese and the European way – and what emerges is something completely new. It is analogous to what happens when everything is pared back to basics in the calligraphy of “Shoshu-san”: in the music all the tone-colours and rhythms are subservient to the beauty of the melody. On the 400-year old tune “Rokudan” it is composer Yatsuhashi Kengyō whose spirit reigns. The flow of sound from the koto has a clarinet melody as counterpoint. It then gradually and slowly becomes imbued by Schaefer and Eckhardt with more dynamic intensity and swing. One of the pivotal pieces on the album is the slowly evolving “Santoka’s Walk” which allows itself to stray off on all sorts of subsidiary paths. It is inspired by an epigram from the Zen monk Santoka Taneda: “On travels touching this and that, recording the mind´s changing impressions.“ Schaefer has made this idea into the leitmotif which runs right through the CD. This album bringing together the West and the Far East does not only have reflective and lyrical tracks. On “Ticket To Osaka,” for example, Schaefer captures the commotion and bustle of the big city. On “Kansai Two-Face”, a nostalgic melody on the koto encounters an urgent and effervescent improvisation from the clarinet which is spurred on by the rhythm players. That very brief moment encompasses the contradictions of present-day Japan, it brings together opulence and simplicity, modernity and tradition in a confined space. At first sight, the final track, Ravel’s “Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant” from "Mother Goose" might seem a surprise, but there is a context: around 1900 the French impressionists in both art and music fell under the spell of “japonisme,” and their enthusiasm gave rise to work of enduring quality. Eric Schaefer’s quartet has found fascinating ways to carry this lineage forward into our time.