Masabumi Kikuchi & Masayuki Takayanagi - Live at Jazz Inn Lovely 1990 (2020) {NoBusiness NBCD135}

This live date from the titular Nagoya venue reveals the mellow side of Japanese free jazz. That could seem unlikely when considering the lead name, guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, a maverick follower of Lennie Tristano who later turned to total freak-outs and noise, partnering with the likes of outsider saxophonist Kaoru Abe. Recorded nine months before his death 30 years ago this month, the concert finds him in the company of regular collaborator bassist Nobuyoshi Ino, plus celebrated pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, who died in 2015, sitting in during a trip home from his long sojourn in the U.S. Kikuchi, who worked with Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Dave Liebman and Joe Henderson, as well as a cooperative trio with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, exerts a pull towards the tradition.

But Takayanagi and Ino are not unwilling accomplices. Even on one of the two cuts they play as a duo, they touch on a standard material as a basis for further exploration. Much of the time Ino, who sure-footedly straddles the inside/ outside dichotomy, anchors the often conversational interaction close to the mainstream. But it’s when he picks up his bow to become an equal voice without any supportive function that proceedings unloose their moorings. One of the high points of the disc comes on “Duo I” when his arco slashes and organ-like tones engage in prickly dialogue with Takayanagi’s scratchy fragmentation. Similarly on “Trio III” Ino extracts creaks and groans from his bass as the weather veers stormy, Kikuchi thunders and the guitarist flashes in dramatic gesture. Conventional gambits reappear during “Trio I” as the three parlay an abstraction, which doesn’t shy from consonance. Later Kikuchi plies repeated rhythmic figures that rejuvenate the exchanges, before ultimately harping on an insistent progression. Once Ino latches on, the pianist moves into a loose rendition of Monk’s “Locomotive”, with Takayanagi adding oblique but blues-inflected commentary. It forms the final chapter in an album, which soothes as much as it stirs.