Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band

‘It's this kind of creative ambition (and the ability to pull the music off) that should inspire non-believers to take a closer look at new jazz. It's as good as it ever was.’

Otomo Yoshihide is a musican with a direct approach. While his music has been truly wide-ranging ever since the early days of his career, there has been a common thread: he always approaches music in a straightforward way, based on a clear plan, without any ambiguity or concealment. I think it is because of this straightforwardness that one always feels a pop-like brightness in Otomo Yoshihide’s music, even when he produces explosive noise or plays quiet music comprised of an extremely small numbers of sounds.

Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band is a project that could well be called the culmination of Otomo’s work as of now. In the most direct sense, this group is actually renamed „Otomo Yoshihide and Amachan Special Big Band”, made up of the musicians who played the soundtrack of the NHK drama series Amachan, aired from April to September 2013.

In its jazzlike approach, it is also a successor to Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Quintet (ONJQ, 1999-2004) and its expanded version, Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Orchestra (ONJO, 2004-to the present). Otomo’s experience with the ensemble (formed in 2005) called „Oto Asobi no Kai (The Otoasobi Project),” whose members include people who are intellectually challenged, was surely an important influence as well. And in the Bon Odori Project - launched in 2013 as a part of Project FUKUSHIMA, which Otomo organized after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and held in various locations including Fukushima, Sapporo, Tokyo, Aichi and Gifu - the music is actually played by this big band.

This album is a recording of a concert held at Shinjuku Pit Inn on December 29, 2014. […] Otomo Yoshihide’s arrangements are simple and very free. They make the most of each instrument’s tonal diversity and each musician’s „accent”. There’s the groove of the percussion team, mixing chanhiki/ chindon and Latin; the nostalgic timbres of the accordion; the genial horn ensemble, underpinned by the tuba, playing in every style from brass band to ska band to New Orleans jazz; Sachiko M’s sinewaves, drifting through the space and creating a feeling of tension; and Takefumi Kobayashi’s drumming, vigorously propelling in the whole band forward.

I think the big band’s performances are joyful times for Otomo Yoshihide, who sits on the far right and cheerfully emcees. Like Gil Evans and Carla Bley, Otomo Yoshihide is a bandleader who provides a sort of sandbox where the members can play to their hearts’ content, then stands at the front and has just as much fun as everyone else. This is the ideal environment for a jazz big band - or rather, for jazz itself!