Hazama, Miho - Time River
SKU
25-SSD-CD-1420
About a year and a half ago, I caught Miho conducting her amazing big band, which is a cross between a jazz big band and a string quartet. I was truly impressed! She's really, really something and if you are interested at all in large scale arranging and like jazz, you need to hear her. This is her second album.
Miho Hazama - conducting, piano on tracks 6 & 7
Gil Goldstein - accordion on track 3
Joshua Redman - soprano, tenor sax on track 8
Cam Collins - alto sax, clarinet
Ryoji Ihara - tenor, soprano sax, flute
Andrew Gutauskas - baritone sax, bass clarinet
Matthew Jodrell - trumpet flugelhorn
Adam Unsworth - French horn
Joyce Hammann - violin
Sara Caswell - violin
Lois Martin - viola
Meaghan Burke - cello
James Shipp - vibraphone
Sam Harris - piano on tracks 2, 5 & 8
Alex Brown - piano on tracks 1, 3, 4 & 9
Sam Anning - bass
Jake Goldbas - drums
Time River continues Hazama’s work with her distinctive 13-piece band m_unit, a hybrid of jazz big band and classical chamber ensemble, allowing the composer to draw upon the entire breadth of her influences. In addition, the band is joined by accordionist Gil Goldstein and saxophonist Joshua Redman for memorable guest appearances. The album features eight striking Hazama originals along with an unexpected arrangement of “Magdalena,” a song by the prog rock band A Perfect Circle.
Hazama says that the album’s title, and inspiration for its title track, came from the fact that at the same time that three years felt like an exceedingly long time to take between albums, time nevertheless flowed by like rapids in a river with her busy schedule, split between leading her band in New York City and playing and arranging for TV shows, movies, commercials, and other artists in Tokyo.
“There were moments when I was wondering if time was going forward or backwards or stopped,” Hazama recalls. “It was as if I was standing still and everything else was going by really fast or slow. I found that the time conflicts between myself and everything else were really interesting, so I wanted to describe that feeling through music.”
Three of Hazama’s originals – opener “The Urban Legend,” “Introduction” and “Fugue” – were written from geometric, number-based concepts, which suggests a far more mathematical approach than the final, emotionally sweeping recordings bear out. The latter two bring Hazama’s classical background into the spotlight, and also feature her piano playing. The through-composed pieces also reveal Hazama’s ambitions to bridge the worlds of classical and jazz.
“Most symphony orchestras play Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and Leonard Bernstein’s music, and that’s it as far as jazz-related music,” she observes. “I think that’s a shame. It’s one of my dreams to see symphony orchestras play more jazz music in the future, so I write with that goal in mind.”
- LabelSunnyside
- UPC016728142021